Honoré de Balzac, who now owes one…

Honoré de Balzac, who now owes one hundred thousand francs because of his failed type foundry, printing establishment, and publishing venture, is bailed out of debt by his family.

His literary output had begun with chronicles and sketches on widely varied social and artistic topics.

The journals to which he contributes—political and artistic reviews set up by a new generation of intellectuals who viewed the cultural debris of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, and the complacency of the restored monarchy with a mixture of cynicism, idealism and regret—are increasingly looking for short fiction, which Balzac is able to provide.

A collection, Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes from Private Life) comes out in 1829, and is well received.

Told with a journalistic eye that examines the fabric of modern life, the tales do not shrink from social and political realities.

At thirty, Balzac has found a distinctive voice.

He had already turned out potboiler historical novels in the manner of Walter Scott and Anne Radcliffe, on commission from publishers, but only under pseudonyms ('Horace de Saint-Aubin', for example, was responsible for the scandalous Vicaire des Ardennes (1822), banned for its depiction of pseudo-incestuous relations and, more importantly, of a married priest).

He enters the mainstream as an author of full-length fiction with Le Dernier chouan, a sober tale of provincial France in Revolutionary times, published under his own name (a first) in 1829, as is The Physiology of Marriage, which is an unqualified success.

In this year, he begins writing La Comedie humaine.