Un début dans la vie
Illustration from an 1897 edition
by Oreste Cortazzo |
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| Author | Honoré de Balzac |
|---|---|
| Original title | Un début dans la vie |
| Translator | Katharine Prescott Wormeley |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Series | La Comédie humaine |
| Genre | Scènes de la vie privée |
| Publisher | La Législature |
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Publication date
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1842 |
| Preceded by | Modeste Mignon |
| Followed by | Albert Savarus |
Un début dans la vie (A Start in Life) is a novel by the French writer Honoré de Balzac. It is the sixth of the Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes of Private Life) in La Comédie humaine.
The novel was serialized in the review La Législature in 1842 under the title Le Danger des mystifications (The Dangers of ). In 1845 it appeared under its present title in the second Furne edition of La Comédie humaine. Un début dans la vie was the fifth work in Volume 4, or the twenty-fifth of the Scènes de la vie privée.
Balzac wrote Un début dans la vie during one of his many visits to the commune of L'Isle-Adam in Val-d'Oise, a few kilometres north of Paris. The novel is based on a short-story by Balzac's sister Laure Surville, which was later published in 1854 under the title Le Voyage en coucou (The Journey in a Rickety Carriage). Balzac recast the story, transforming it into a profound study of human vanity and its consequences. The novel is dedicated to Laure with the words:
Let the brilliant mind that gave me the subject of this Scene have the honor of it.
In 1841 Balzac drafted the first version of the story with a view to publication in the journal Le Musée des familles. First entitled Les Jeunes gens (Young People) and then Le Voyage en coucou, the work was not to exceed 3,000 lines. The editor Piquée, however, declined to publish it.
The following year Balzac redrafted the story, expanding it to fourteen chapters, and it was serialized in La Législature from 26 July to 6 September under the title Le Danger des mystifications. Three pirated Belgian editions of the work also appeared this year under the same title.
In June 1844 the novel was published under its present title by Dumont. Largely unchanged from its serialization, the work appeared in a two-volume quarto edition, the second volume containing Balzac's La Fausse Maîtresse (The Imaginary Mistress).
In 1845 Un début dans la vie was published in Volume 4 of Furne's second edition of La Comédie humaine. In this version of the work Balzac greatly expanded Mistigris' arsenal of burlesque proverbs. (Three further proverbs were added to the corrected Furne edition.)
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