Le Lys dans la vallée

Le Lys dans la Vallée
Image from Le Lys dans la Vallée
AuthorHonoré de Balzac
IllustratorÉdouard Toudouze
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
SeriesLa Comédie humaine
PublisherEdmond Werdet
Publication date
1835
Preceded byLe Curé de village 
Followed byLa Peau de chagrin 

Le Lys dans la Vallée (English: The Lily of the Valley) is an 1835 novel about love and society by the French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). (The title, in French, does not refer to the English flower called "lily of the valley", which is called "muguet" in French). It primarily concerns the emotionally vibrant but never physically consummated affection between Félix de Vandenesse and Henriette de Mortsauf. It is part of his series of novels (or Roman-fleuve) known as La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy), which parodies and depicts French society in the period of the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815–1848). In his novel he also mentions the château Azay-le-Rideau, in the Loire Valley, which can still be visited today.

Inspiration

Henriette de Mortsauf was modelled on Balzac's close friend Laure Antoinette de Berny (née Hinner), a woman 22 years his senior who greatly encouraged his early career.[1] Mme. de Berny died shortly after reading the completed novel[2] — in which Henriette also dies.

English translations

  • Katharine Prescott Wormeley: The Lily of the Valley (Roberts Bros., 1891)[3]
  • Ellen Marriage (under pseudonym "James Waring": The Lily of the Valley (J. M. Dent, 1897)
  • Peter Bush: The Lily of the Valley (New York Review Books, 2024)

References

  1. ^ Honoré de Balzac by Albert Keim and Louis Lumet, chapter 4
  2. ^ Women in the Life of Balzac by Juanita Helm Floyd
  3. ^ Balzac, Honoré de; Wormeley, Katharine Prescott (1891). The lily of the valley. University of California Libraries. Boston, Roberts brothers.

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The Lily of the Valley
  • (in French) Le Lys dans la vallée, audio version
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List of titles
Scènes de la vie privéeScènes de la vie de provinceScènes de la vie ParisienneScènes de la vie politique
Scènes de la vie militaireScènes de la vie de campagneÉtudes philosophiquesÉtudes analytiques
  • La Physiologie du mariage
  • Petites misères de la vie conjugale
RelatedRelated works by others
  • Fernand Lotte: Armorial de la Comédie Humaine
Authority control databases: National Edit this at Wikidata
  • France
  • BnF data


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