Books with author Katharine Prescott Balzac

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"A Daughter of Eve" by Honoré de Balzac (translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley). Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

A Daughter of Eve is one of those stories in which people get themselves into terrible trouble, whose ripples spread until they seem to be stuck in some ghastly maelstrom of their own making. The Countess Marie de Vandenesse, out of boredom at being married to a good man, decides to take a lover, one Raoul Nathan. Thinking that his fortune is made, Nathan quickly finds himself in deep water until he is rescued by the efforts of the Countess, who in turn is rescued...

Eveline Hanska (1805-82) was a Polish noblewoman who began reading Balzac's novels in the late 1820s and sent him an anonymous letter in 1832. This was the start of a decades long correspondence which eventually led to their marriage in 1850, following her husband's death in 1841 and the delay caused by complications arising from the terms governing the inheritance of his estate. Balzac died five months after their marriage. Katharine Prescott Wormeley (1830-1908), who had served as a nurse in the American Civil War, was one of the best known translators of her time having translated the entire works of Balzac for American readers in addition to many other works by French literary figures.

The Abbé François Birotteau and the Abbé Hyacinthe Troubert, both of whom are priests at Tours, have separate lodgings in the house belonging to the crabby spinster Sophie Gamard in that city. Birotteau is an other-worldly, gentle, introspective type; Troubert, who is ten years younger than his fellow boarder, is very much of the world: he is a careerist devoured by ambition. Birotteau prides himself on his furniture and fine library, inherited from his friend and predecessor as parish priest of Saint-Gatien de Tours. Without reading all its clauses, or at least without remembering them, he signs a document handed to him by Mlle Gamard, forfeiting his entitlement to his lodgings and making over their contents to her in the event of his vacating his premises for any considerable period. He leaves them for a fortnight’s stay in the country, where he is served with a possession order by his landlady’s lawyer. On returning home he finds Troubert installed in his apartments, in full possession of his furniture and his library, whilst he himself has been moved into inferior rooms. Birotteau abandons any prospect of a lawsuit to regain his property, as his friends in the provincial aristocracy of Tours gradually withdraw their backing. In return for giving up his rooms he had expected to be appointed to the vacant canonry of the cathedral. Instead, he is demoted to a much poorer parish two or three miles out of Tours. Deprived of his library and furniture, he leaves Mlle Gamard’s, thinking that this will indirectly bring him, through Troubert, the canonry which never comes. Troubert, on the other hand, is first appointed Vicar-General of the diocese of Tours, then Bishop of Troyes, scarcely deigning to look in Birotteau’s direction as he speeds past his colleague’s dilapidated presbytery on his way to his diocese.