Cousin Bette

Cousine Bette (1847) was one of the last and greatest of Balzac’s novels. By the time he wrote it he had already created in his monumental novel-series, The Human Comedy, a whole world of people on whom to draw for characters; he had also acquired a mastery of compelling narrative. Cousin Bette is the story of the Hulot family: risen to eminence under Napoleon I, their aristocratic values leave them bewildered and vulnerable in the money-ridden bourgeois Paris of the 1840s. It is also the story of Bette herself, the poor relation whose patient malice finally leads to their destruction.

(Source: back cover)