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2 volumes. 354, [3 errata], [1 blank], [1 "Table des Matières"]; 337, [1 blank], [2 "Table des Matières," errata], [11 ad], [1 blank] pp. (8vo) original printed yellow wrappers, rebacked to style, top edges gilt. First Edition.

One of the novels of Balzac's massive Comédie humaine, this title being one of the Scenes de la vie parisienne. Here Balzac consciously pioneers a new genre -- the tragedy of the little man. As he writes, "May the present volume be the poem of those vicissitudes of bourgeois life that no voice has thought to sing, so much are they denuded of grandeur, though by the same token immense: what we speak of here is not a single man, but a whole nation of suffering." A very rare work in the original wrappers. George, p. 42; Vicaire I, col. 210.