The following volumes are already published:—
The Wild Ass’s Skin.
The Chouans.
Eugénie Grandet.
The Quest of the Absolute.
The Unknown Masterpiece.
A Bachelor’s Establishment.
Pierrette and The Abbé Birotteau.
The Country Doctor.
The Cat and Racket.
Ursule Mirouet.
Old Goriot.
The Atheist’s Mass.
La Grande Bretêche.
César Birotteau.
Modeste Mignon.
The Village Parson.
Béatrix.
The following volumes are in active preparation:—
The Peasantry.
A Harlot’s Progress. 2 vols.
About Catherine de Medici.
A Woman of Thirty.
A Lily of the Valley.
Lost Illusions. 2 vols.
Seraphita.
The Seamy Side of History.
Cousin Betty.
Cousin Pons, &c. &c.
Athenæum.
“The volume is got up with the taste the publishers have taught the public to expect of them.”
Times.
“Certainly few English critics are better qualified than Mr. Saintsbury to write either a general introduction such as he here gives, dealing with Balzac’s life and the general characteristics of his work and genius, or a series of prefaces such as he promises for each succeeding volume.”
Glasgow Herald.
“The translation (‘Old Goriot’) has been done by Miss Ellen Marriage, and is characterised by that accuracy and fluency of style which, in the five or six volumes already contributed by her to the series, have shown her thorough competency for as difficult a task as a translator could undertake. It has the singular merit of being so idiomatic and natural that those who do not know the original might easily take it to be an English story of Parisian life, and yet so true to Balzac’s manner that those who are familiar with him will recognise many of his peculiarities even in the version, and almost find themselves doubting whether they are reading him in French or English.”