''Le Lys dans la Vallée'' (English: ''The Lily in the Valley'' or ''The Lily of the Valley'') is an 1835 novel about love and society by the French novelist and playwright

Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac ( , more commonly ; ; born Honoré Balzac; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence ''La Comédie humaine'', which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is ...

(1799–1850). (The title, in French, does not refer to the English flower called "lily of the valley", which is called "muguet" in French). It primarily concerns the emotionally vibrant but never physically consummated affection between Félix de Vandenesse and Henriette de Mortsauf. It is part of his series of novels (or ''Roman-fleuve'') known as ''

La Comédie humaine (; English: ''The Human Comedy'') is Honoré de Balzac's 1829–48 multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration (1815–30) and the July Monarchy (1830–48). ''La Com� ...

'' (''The Human Comedy''), which parodies and depicts French society in the period of the

Bourbon Restoration Bourbon Restoration may refer to: France under the House of Bourbon: * Bourbon Restoration in France (1814, after the French revolution and Napoleonic era, until 1830; interrupted by the Hundred Days in 1815) Spain under the Spanish Bourbons: * Ab ...

and the

July Monarchy The July Monarchy (), officially the ''Kingdom of France'' (), was a liberalism, liberal constitutional monarchy in France under , starting on 9 August 1830, after the revolutionary victory of the July Revolution of 1830, and ending 26 Februar ...

(1815–1848). In his novel he also mentions the château Azay-le-Rideau, in the Loire Valley, which can still be visited today.

Inspiration

Henriette de Mortsauf was modelled on Balzac's close friend Laure Antoinette de Berny (née Hinner), a woman 22 years his senior who greatly encouraged his early career. Mme. de Berny died shortly after reading the completed novel — in which Henriette also dies.

English translations

* Katharine Prescott Wormeley: ''The Lily of the Valley'' (Roberts Bros., 1891) *

Ellen Marriage Ellen Marriage (26 August 1865 – 23 December 1946) was an English translator from French, notably of Balzac's novels. Life Marriage was born in Stratford, Essex, into the Quaker family of James Haworth Marriage (1839–1913), a confectioner ...

(under pseudonym "James Waring": ''The Lily of the Valley'' (J. M. Dent, 1897) * Peter Bush: ''The Lily in the Valley'' (New York Review Books, 2024)

References

External links

*
Le Lys dans la vallée, audio version
1835 French novels Books of La Comédie humaine Novels by Honoré de Balzac NYRB Classics {{1830s-novel-stub