A world-class coffee drinker (Balzac, French novelist) born on May 20 -- biographical highlights

from Writer's Almanac (American Public Media, Garrison Keillor) -- today's listserv

May 20 is the birthday of the author who's been called "the Shakespeare of the novel": Honore de Balzac, born in Tours, France (1799). He studied law at his father's insistence, but he preferred to write or pursue a variety of get-rich-quick schemes.

He was a printer's nightmare: he would continue to change and expand his novels, even after they had been typeset, so they would have to be redone at great expense to the author. He was deeply in debt much of the time, and wrote for 14 to 16 hours a day to keep ahead of his creditors. He often wore a white dressing gown, and downed cup after cup of strong, black coffee.

In one three-year period, he produced more than 20 works.  The product of all that work was a vast series--more than 90 novels and novellas--that he called La Comedie Humaine (The Human Comedy). He considered himself "the secretary of French society," and was so thorough that Oscar Wilde once said, "The 19th century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac."