The cover page is adapted from Le salon de Madame de Balzac, rue Fortunée, a painting completed between 1850 and 1880 by Jean-François Gigoux. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Gigouxwww.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
Shorts from Scenes from Private Life
Chapitres (21)
- Introduction 0:00
- At the Sign of the Cat and Racket 35:26
- The Ball at Sceaux 2:55:18
- The Purse 5:16:59
- The Vendetta 6:34:04
- Madame Firmiani 9:20:48
- A Second Home 10:14:43
- Domestic Peace 13:04:24
- The Imaginary Mistress 14:32:26
- A Study of Woman 16:41:51
- Another Study of Woman 17:04:08
- La Grande Bretêche 18:44:13
- The Deserted Woman 19:36:36
- La Grenadière 21:29:57
- The Message 22:29:49
- Gobseck 23:03:26
- Honorine 25:30:23
- Colonel Chabert 28:52:28
- The Atheist’s Mass 31:28:02
- The Commission in Lunacy 32:11:17
- Pierre Grassou 35:14:01
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The short stories and novellas from the Scenes from Private Life portion of Balzac’s The Human Comedy represent a cross-section of French culture from the first half of the nineteenth century. There are drawing room intrigues of the rich (“Domestic Peace”), unrequited love (“The Imaginary Mistress”), a romance among the residents of a boarding house (“The Purse”), and even a Corsican vendetta (“The Vendetta”).
Each of these, as well as the remaining stories in the collection, are marked by Balzac’s renowned talent for fully realized characters, by his rich and detailed descriptions of places and people, and especially of the emotions that drive them. As a progenitor of the modern novel, he wanted to write about not only the romantic and beautiful, but also the hurtful and disturbing; in short, he wanted to write about daily French life, however good or bad it might be. Many of the characters so richly described here will be seen again and again throughout the rest of The Human Comedy.