d appended to the
introductory critical notices of each volume of the English translation
edited by Saintsbury (London, 1895-1898), which also contains a short
Memoir and general criticism. Before the _Edition definitive_ (1869
onwards), the works had been issued during the author's life in various
forms and instalments, the earliest _Comedie humaine_ being of 1842 to 1846
in sixteen volumes. For many years, however, the edition best known was
that referred to in Browning as "all Balzac's novels fifty volumes long,"
really fifty-five small and closely printed 24mos kept stereotyped with
varying dates by Michel (Calmann) Levy, which did not contain the
miscellaneous works and was not arranged according to the author's last
disposition, but did include the _Oeuvres de jeunesse_. These were not
reprinted in the _Edition definitive_, but this gives the miscellaneous
works in four volumes, an invaluable volume of correspondence, and the
_Histoire des oeuvres_ as cited. To this was added, in 1893, another
volume, _Repertoire des oeuvres de Balzac_, in which the history of the
various personages of the _Comedie_ is tracked throughout and ranged under
separate articles by MM. Cerfbeer and Christophe with extraordinary pains,
and with a result of usefulness which should have protected it from some
critical sneers. In 1899 appeared, as the first volume of _Oeuvres
posthumes_, an instalment of the _Lettres a l'etrangere_, and in 1906 a
second (up to 1844) with a portrait of Madame Hanska, and other
illustrations.

Works on Balzac are very numerous, and some of them are of much importance.
Sainte-Beuve and Balzac fell out, and a furious diatribe by the novelist on
the critic is preserved; but the latter's postmortem examination in
_Causeries du lundi_, vol. ii., is not unfair, though it could hardly be
cordial. Gautier, who was a very intimate and trusty friend of Balzac, has
left an excellent study, mainly personal, reprinted in his _Portraits
contemporains_. Lamartine produced a volume, not of much value, on Balzac
in 1866; and minor contemporaries--Gozlan, Lemer, Champfleury--supplied
something. But the series of important studies of Balzac, based on the
whole of his work and not biased by friendship or enmity, begins with
Taine's Essay of 1858, reprinted in volume form, 1865. Even then the
_Oeuvres diverses_ were accessible only by immense labour in the scattered
originals, and the invaluable _Correspondance_ not at all. It was