The Chouans (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

Appearing in 1829, Les Chouans was the first of Balzac’s books to be published under his own name. It is a tale of love gone wrong amid the anti-government Chouan uprising in Brittany in 1799.  This is the book that established Balzac’s literary reputation, and was, as one critic wrote, the author’s “passage into the Promised Land.”