French literary history
Paris is perhaps the greatest character in Balzac’s Human Comedy
The drama of the street is a constant theme, though Balzac himself took most pleasure in the city’s ‘gloomy passages and silent cul-de-sacs between midnight and two in the morning’
The English lieutenant’s Frenchwoman: the tragic story of Adèle Hugo
Mark Bostridge’s obsession with Victor Hugo’s beautiful daughter almost rivals her own infatuation with Albert Pinson, the naval officer she pursued around the world
