A tale of jealousy, revenge, and destructive passion,
La Cousine Bette(1847) is one of the most celebrated novels in French realist fiction. In the summer of 1846, Balzac, by now aged forty-seven and in rapidly declining health, had begun work on a two-part novella, a study of familial neglect entitled
Les Parents pauvres[
The Poor Relations] (1847). The first volume,
Le Vieux Musicien[
The Old Musician] (which later became
Le Cousin Pons) (1847), was already in progress when, as so often before in his career, he decided that both halves of the project merited a longer treatment, and should be expanded into two full-length novels. Turning his attention to
La Cousine Bettein August, Balzac struggled for several weeks to make any significant advance on the manuscript. Buoyed by the news…
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Citation: Watts, Andrew. "La Cousine Bette". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 November 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4132, accessed 27 November 2024.]
