SOURCE: An introduction to Eugénie Grandet, by Honoré de Balzac, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1956, pp. v-xv.

In the following essay, Girard provides a critical and historical overview of Eugénie Grandet, sketching the novel's geographical, social, and biographical background.

Towards the end of his life Balzac began to hate being called 'father of Eugénie Grandet.' He imagined that this emphasis upon his first great novel was calculated to derogate from the remainder of his work. 'It is admittedly a masterpiece,' he used to say, 'but only a little one'; and in the end he came to loathe it!

While recognizing that Balzac unquestionably wrote novels that may be described as more spacious, more profound, and more complex, I do not for that reason consider Eugénie Grandet unworthy to rank high among the hundred or so novels that form the Comédie Humaine...