Eugenie Grandet

Eugénie Grandet is a novel first serialised from 1833 to 1834, and published in book form in 1834 by French author Honoré de Balzac. While he was writing it he conceived his ambitious project La Comédie humaine and almost immediately prepared a second edition, revising the names of some of the characters so that Eugénie Grandet then fitted into the section: Scenes from provincial life (Scènes de la vie de province) in the Comédie. He dedicated the edition to Maria Du Fresnay, who was then his lover and was the mother of his daughter, Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay.
Christopher Prendergast writes “Eugenie’s story is primarily of interest as the tale of a rite de passage from innocence to experience, ignorance to knowledge, illusion to disenchantment.”