Honoré de Balzac in the context of "Gustave Flaubert"

Monument to Balzac is a sculpture by Auguste Rodin in memory of the French novelist Honoré de Balzac. According to Rodin, the sculpture aims to portray the writer's persona rather than a physical likeness. The work was commissioned in 1891 by the Société des Gens de Lettres and a full-size plaster model was displayed in 1898 at a Salon in Champ de Mars. After coming under criticism the model was rejected by the Société and Rodin moved it to his home in Meudon. On 2 July 1939 (22 years after the sculptor's death) the model was cast in bronze for the first time and placed on the Boulevard du Montparnasse at the intersection with Boulevard Raspail.

Casts and various studies of the sculpture are today in many different collections including the Ackland Art Museum, Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum in Antwerp, The Norton Simon Museum of Art, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, the Musée Rodin in Meudon, the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Hirschhorn Sculpture Garden (Smithsonian) in Washington D.C, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, in front of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands, in Caracas, Venezuela in the open spaces around the former Ateneo de Caracas, now UNEARTES and Balzac in the Robe of a Dominican Monk in Museo Soumaya in Mexico City. Today the artwork is sometimes considered the first truly modern sculpture.

Eroticism (from Ancient Greek ἔρως (érōs) 'love, desire' and -ism) is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, sculpture, photography, drama, film, music, or literature. It may also be found in advertising. The term may also refer to a state of sexual arousal or anticipation of such – an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts.

As French novelist Honoré de Balzac stated, eroticism is dependent not just upon an individual's sexual morality, but also the culture and time in which an individual resides.

Stefan Zweig (/zwaɪɡ, swaɪɡ/ ZWYGHE, SWYGHE; German: [ˈʃtɛfan t͡svaɪ̯k] or Austrian German: [t͡svaɪ̯g]; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian writer. At the height of his literary career in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world.

Born into a Jewish family, Zweig was raised in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He wrote historical studies of famous literary figures, such as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky in Drei Meister (1920; Three Masters), and decisive historical events in Decisive Moments in History (1927). He wrote biographies of Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935) and Marie Antoinette (Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, 1932), among others. Zweig's best-known fiction includes Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922), Amok (1922), Fear (1925), Confusion of Feelings (1927), Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927), the psychological novel Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity, 1939), and The Royal Game (1941).

Balzac in the Robe of a Dominican Monk is a bronze sculpture by French artist Auguste Rodin, one of the studies made in preparation to the Monument to Balzac, a tribute to novelist Honoré de Balzac commissioned by the Society of Men of Letters of France in 1891.

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil (French: [amɑ̃tin lysil oʁɔʁ dypɛ̃]; 1 July 1804 – 8 June 1876), best known by her pen name George Sand (French: [ʒɔʁʒ(ə) sɑ̃d]), was a French novelist, memoirist and journalist. Being more renowned than either Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balzac in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. She has more than 50 volumes of various works to her credit, including tales, plays and political texts, alongside her 70 novels.

Like her great-grandmother, Louise Dupin, whom she admired, George Sand advocated for women's rights and passion, criticized the institution of marriage, and fought against the prejudices of a conservative society. She was considered scandalous because of her turbulent love life, her adoption of masculine clothing, and her masculine pseudonym.

Ten Novels and Their Authors (originally published as Great Novelists and Their Novels) is a 1948 work of literary criticism by William Somerset Maugham. Maugham collects together what he considers to have been the ten greatest novels and writes about the books and the authors. The ten novels are:

1. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding (1749)
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)
3. The Red and the Black by Stendhal (1830)
4. Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac (1835)
5. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1849)
6. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
8. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
9. The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky (1880)
10. War and Peace by Tolstoy (1869)

This book was originally a series of magazine articles commissioned by Redbook.

The Route Napoléon is the route taken by Napoleon I in 1815 on his return from Elba. It is now concurrent with sections of routes N85, D1085, D4085, and D6085.

The route begins at Golfe-Juan, where Napoleon disembarked on 1 March 1815, beginning the Hundred Days that ended at Waterloo. Napoleon led around 1,000 men, horses and equipment, and completed the journey in less than seven days, reaching Grenoble on 7 March 1815. From there he proceeded to Paris, where, as Balzac wrote, 'France gave herself to Napoleon, just as a pretty girl abandons herself to a Lancer'.

A Francophile is a person who has a strong affinity or appreciation for the people, culture, language, history, or government of France. The term "Francophile" can be contrasted with Francophobe (or Gallophobe), someone who shows hatred or other forms of negative feelings towards all that is French.

A Francophile may enjoy French artists (such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, and Henri Matisse); authors and poets (such as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Voltaire, Honoré de Balzac, and George Sand), musicians (such as Daft Punk, Jean-Michel Jarre, Serge Gainsbourg, Édith Piaf, Johnny Hallyday, and Carla Bruni), filmmakers (such as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Robert Bresson, and Jean-Pierre Melville), and cuisine (such as baguettes, croissants, frog legs, French cheeses, and French wine). Francophilia often arises in former French colonies, where the elite spoke French and adopted many French habits. In other European countries such as Romania and Russia, French culture has also long been popular among the upper class. Historically, Francophilia has been associated with supporters of Enlightenment philosophy during and after the French Revolution, where democratic uprisings challenged the autocratic regimes of Europe, as well as liberalism and opposition to absolute monarchy and authoritarian governments in general.