Beatrix — Honore de Balzac

Honore de Balzac excelled at creating unforgettable characters, but most of his creations were works of pure fiction. Many critics have asserted that the novel Beatrix is a roman a clef depicting the life of the French memoirist George Sand, as well as the larger cultural shift from an era of genteel aristocracy and class stratification to a more democratic way of living.