SOURCE: A preface to Eugénie Grandet, by Honoré de Balzac, translated by Ellen Marriage, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1930, pp. xi-xv.

Saintsbury is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on Balzac's work during the early twentieth century. In the following excerpt from his preface to the Everyman Edition (1907) of Balzac's novel, he discourses on Eugénie Grandet as a work that is "very nearly perfect. "

With Eugénie Grandet, as with one or two, but only one or two others of Balzac's works, we come to a case of Quis vituperavit? Here, and perhaps here only, with Le Médecin de Campagne and Le Père Goriot, though there may be carpers and depreciators, there are no open deniers of the merit of the work. The pathos of Eugénie, the mastery of Grandet, the success of the minor characters, especially Nanon, are universally recognised. The...