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Cousin Bette
  • Published: 1 October 1965
  • ISBN: 9780140441604
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $26.99

Cousin Bette

Formats & editions
Paperback
15 Feb 2002
Paperback
1 Oct 1965
Hardback
29 Nov 1991
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'Envy remained hidden in her heart, like a plague germ which may come to life and devastate a city'

Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and their daughter Hortense. Already deeply resentful of their wealth, when Bette learns that the man she is in love with plans to marry Hortense, she becomes consumed by the desire to exact her revenge and dedicates herself to the destruction of the Hulot family, plotting their ruin with patient, silent malice. Cousin Bette is a gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, and a brilliant portrayal of the grasping, bourgeois society of 1840s Paris. The culmination of the Comédie humaine, Balzac's epic chronicle of his times, it is one of his greatest triumphs as a novelist.
  • Published: 1 October 1965
  • ISBN: 9780140441604
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $26.99
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On Sparta
Plutarch
The Rise And Fall of Athens
Plutarch
The Rise of Rome
Plutarch
Rome in Crisis
Plutarch
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings
Edgar Allan Poe
The Rise of the Roman Empire
Polybius
The Master of Ballantrae
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings
Alexander Pope
Manon Lescaut
Abbe Prevost
The Secret History
Procopius
Fourteen Byzantine Rulers
Michael Psellus
Eugene Onegin
Alexander Pushkin
Novels, Tales, Journeys
Alexander Pushkin
The Queen of Spades and Other Stories
Alexander Pushkin
The Works of the Gawain Poet
AD Putter, Myra Stokes
The All-Pervading Melodious Drumbeat
Senge Ra Yeshe, Ra Yeshe Senge
Iphigenia, Phaedra, Athaliah
Jean Racine
The Italian
Ann Radcliffe
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Radcliffe
Ten Days That Shook the World
John Reed
Clarissa, or the History of A Young Lady
Samuel Richardson
Pamela
Samuel Richardson
The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta
John Rollin Ridge
The Notebooks Of Malte Laurids Briggs
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Selected Poems And Letters
Arthur Rimbaud
Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not)
Jose Rizal
The Pre-Raphaelites: From Rossetti to Ruskin
Dinah Roe
The Dhammapada
Valerie Roebuck
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
John Romer
Tomorrow Is Now
Eleanor Rossevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt
Complete Poems
Christina Rossetti
Selected Poems: Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand
The Confessions
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A Discourse on Inequality
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Of The Social Contract and Other Political Writings
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Selected Poems
Rumi
Spiritual Verses
The Jalaluddin Rumi
Unto This Last and Other Writings
John Ruskin
The Case Against Satan
Ray Russell
Haunted Castles
Ray Russell
Venus in Furs
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
The 120 Days of Sodom
The Marquis de Sade
Catiline's War, The Jugurthine War, Histories
Sallust
The Epic of Gilgamesh
N. K. Sandars
Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments of Sappho
SAPPHO
On The Aesthetic Education Of Man
Friedrich Schiller
Essays and Aphorisms
Arthur Schopenhauer
Black No More
George S. Schuyler
Ivanhoe
Walter Scott
Rob Roy
Walter Scott
Waverley
Walter Scott
Dialogues and Letters
Seneca
Four Tragedies And Octavia
Seneca
Letters from a Stoic
Seneca
Phaedra and Other Plays
Seneca
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
William Shakespeare
The Comedy of Errors
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
William Shakespeare
Four Tragedies
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
Henry VI Part One
William Shakespeare
Henry VI Part Three
William Shakespeare
Henry VI Part Two
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare
King Lear
William Shakespeare
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure
William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespeare
The Merry Wives of Windsor
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare
Othello
William Shakespeare
Pericles
William Shakespeare
Richard II
William Shakespeare
Richard III
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
William Shakespeare
Timon of Athens
William Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus
William Shakespeare
Troilus and Cressida
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
William Shakespeare
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
William Shakespeare
The Two Noble Kinsmen
William Shakespeare
The Winter's Tale
William Shakespeare
Henry V
William Shakespeare
Pygmalion
Bernard Shaw, George Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman
George Bernard Shaw
Saint Joan
George Bernard Shaw
Mary and Maria, Matilda
Mary Shelley
Selected Poems and Prose
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The School for Scandal and Other Plays
Richard Sheridan
The Purple Cloud
M P Shiel
The Pillow Book
Sei Shonagon
Roots of Yoga
Mark Singleton, James Mallinson, James Mallinson, Mark Singleton
Medieval Writings on Secular Women
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith
The Little Demon
Fyodor Sologub, Ronald Wilks
The Talmud
Norman Solomon
Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
Pu Songling
The Theban Plays
Sophocles Sophocles
The Three Theban Plays
Sophocles
Botchan
Natsume Soseki
Kokoro
Natsume Soseki
Kusamakura
Natsume Soseki
Sanshiro
Natsume Soseki
The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works
A. C. Spearing
The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser
Ethics
Benedict Spinoza
The Charterhouse of Parma
Stendhal
Love
Stendhal
The Red and the Black
Stendhal
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne
A Sentimental Journey
Laurence Sterne
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror
Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula
Bram Stoker
The Penguin Book of English Song
Richard Stokes
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Stowe
Tristan with the 'Tristran' of Thomas
Gottfried Von Strassburg
The Mysteries of Paris
Eugène Sue, Eugene Sue
The Art of War
Sun-tzu
The History of Mr Polly
H. G. Wells, John Sutherland
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift
A Modest Proposal and Other Writings
Jonathan Swift
Agricola and Germania
Tacitus
Annals
Tacitus
The Annals of Imperial Rome
Tacitus
Selected Poems
Rabindranath Tagore
Beauty and the Beast
MARIA TATAR
Idylls Of The King
Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson
Selected Poems: Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Comedies
Terence
My Inventions And Other Writings
Nikola Tesla
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray, William Thackeray
Military Dispatches
The Duke Of Wellington
Arabian Sands
Wilfred Thesiger
The Marsh Arabs
Wilfred Thesiger
The Portable Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau, Henry Thoreau
Walden and Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau
History of the Peloponnesian War
THUCYDIDES
The Blacker the Berry . . .
Wallace Thurman
The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse
Anthony Thwaite, Geoffrey Bownas
Democracy in America
Alexis Tocqueville
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
Leo Tolstoy
A Confession and Other Religious Writings
Leo Tolstoy
The Cossacks and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
How Much Land Does a Man Need? & Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
Master and Man and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
Resurrection
Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
What is Art?
Leo Tolstoy
Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author
Edward John Trelawny
Can You Forgive Her?
Anthony Trollope
Doctor Thorne
Anthony Trollope
Framley Parsonage
Anthony Trollope
The Last Chronicle of Barset
Anthony Trollope
Phineas Redux
Anthony Trollope
The Prime Minister
Anthony Trollope
The Small House at Allington
Anthony Trollope
The Warden
Anthony Trollope
The Way We Live Now
Anthony Trollope
Arthurian Romances
Chretien de Troyes
Fathers And Sons
Ivan Turgenev
Sketches from a Hunter's Album
Ivan Turgenev
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain
The Prince and the Pauper
Mark Twain
A Tramp Abroad
Mark Twain
Chronicles of the First Crusade
Christopher Tyerman
The Book of Chuang Tzu
Chuang Tzu
Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu
The Kabbalistic Tradition
Alan Unterman
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh
One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each
None
The Penguin Book of the British Short Story: 2
The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers
Hollis Robbins
Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky
Bryan Karetnyk
Lives of the Artists
Giorgio Vasari
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (7th Edition)
Geza Vermes
Around the World in Eighty Days
Jules Verne
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Jules Verne
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne
Chronicles of the Crusades
Joinville and Villehardouin
On Architecture
Vitruvius
Treatise On Toleration
Voltaire
Elective Affinities
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Italian Journey 1786-1788
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Maxims and Reflections
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales
Franz Xaver Von Schonwerth, von Schonwerth, Franz Xaver
Devil on the Cross
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
The Malay Archipelago
Alfred Russel Wallace
The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole
Penguin Book Of First World War Poetry
Matthew George Walter
The Desert Fathers
Benedicta Ward
Poems
Wang Wei
The First Men in the Moon
H. G. Wells
The Invisible Man
H. G. Wells
The Island of Doctor Moreau
H. G. Wells
Kipps
H. G. Wells
A Modern Utopia
H. G. Wells
The Shape of Things to Come
H. G. Wells
A Short History of the World
H. G. Wells
The Sleeper Awakes
H. G. Wells
The Time Machine
H. G. Wells
The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton
The Custom of the Country
Edith Wharton
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton
Summer
Edith Wharton
The Natural History of Selborne
Gilbert White
The Complete Poems
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
The Complete Short Fiction
Oscar Wilde
De Profundis And Other Prison Writings
Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
Oscar Wilde
The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose
Oscar Wilde
Writings From Ancient Egypt
Toby Wilkinson
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft
Night and Day
Virginia Woolf
The Penguin Book of Romantic Poetry
Jonathan Wordsworth
The Prelude
William Wordsworth
Selected Poems
William Wordsworth
Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann
Various
Conversations of Socrates
Xenophon
Hiero The Tyrant And Other Treatises
Xenophon
A History of My Times
Xenophon
The Persian Expedition
Xenophon
The Story of the Stone (Volume II)
Cao Xueqin
The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China
Lu Xun
We
Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Book of Master Mo
Mo Zi
Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies' Delight)
Emile Zola
The Beast Within
Emile Zola
The Debacle
Emile Zola
The Drinking Den
Emile Zola
Nana
Emile Zola
Thérèse Raquin
Emile Zola
Germinal
Emile Zola

About the author

Honoré De Balzac

Honoré de Balzac was born 20 May 1799, the second son of a civil servant. He was brought up away from his family home, first in the care of a wet-nurse and then at a strict grammar school at Vendôme. Balzac then studied at the Sorbonne, before entering training to become a lawyer, like his father. At the age of twenty, to the consternation of his family, he announced his intention to abandon law and become a writer. His early literary works met with little success, and Balzac's various business ventures as a printer and publisher also foundered. In 1829, he began to conceive a grand design for a series of novels comprehensively portraying French society in the eighteenth century. Balzac's Comédie humaine became his life's work, comprising 91 separate works depicting private and public life in the town and country, in politics and the military. Masterpieces of the Comédie humaine include Eugénie Grandet, Père Goirot, The Wild Ass's Skin and The Black Sheep. Many of his novels were critically acclaimed on publication, and went on to profoundly influence authors from Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert to Charles Dickens and Henry James. At the age of fifty-one, Balzac was finally able to marry the recently widowed Evelina Hanska, whom he had loved for eighteen years. But by this time he was in very poor health and Balzac died only five months after his wedding, on 18 August 1850.

Hé

Also by Honoré De Balzac

The Lily in the Valley
The Memoirs of Two Young Wives
Ursule Mirouet
The Atheist's Mass
The Human Comedy
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Old Man Goriot
See all