Balzac's early life was a struggle against literary disappointment and poverty, and he learned his trade by writing a series of lurid commercial novels. As colorful as the world he described, Balzac is the perfect subject for a relentless seducer whose successes were as spectacular as his catastrophes a passionate collector, inventor, explorer, and political campaigner a mesmerizing storyteller with the power to make his fantasies come true. Those who know Balzac will not be able to put his book down those who don’t know him will rush from this biography to the literary treasures created by the writer Robb describes for us in prose that does justice to its subject.” ―Richard Marius, author of Thomas A Biography In the first major English biography of Honore de Balzac for over fifty years, Graham Robb has produced a compelling portrait of the great French novelist whose powers of creation were matched only by his self-destructive tendencies. Robb has given us a splendid tale, meticulously researched, lovingly put together, and beautifully told.

He lives on the English-Scottish border with his wife Margaret.“Honoré de Balzac was one of the greatest storytellers who ever lived, and now at last he has a biography that tells his story in a way Balzac himself would have loved―with all the ambiguities, the flaws, the illusions and myths, the realities of street and salon, the loves and affairs, and above all the imperishable stories that still have the power to make us laugh out loud in one minute and weep in the next. For Parisians the City of Paris awarded him the Grande Médaille de la Ville de Paris.

He is a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The Discovery of France (2007) won both the Duff Cooper and Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prizes. His biographies of Balzac, Hugo (Whitbread Biography Prize) and Rimbaud were all New York Times 'Editor’s Choice' books of the year. He has published widely on French literature and history. Graham Robb was born in Manchester in 1958 and is a former fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.

Balzac by Graham Robb