Main Page

La Cousine Bette is an 1846 novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. Set in mid-19th century Paris, it tells the story of an unmarried middle-aged woman who plots the destruction of her extended family. Bette works with Valérie Marneffe, an unhappily married young lady, to seduce and torment a series of men. One of these is Baron Hector Hulot, husband to Bette's cousin Adeline. He sacrifices his family's fortune and good name to please Valérie, who leaves him for a tradesman named Crevel. The book is part of the Scènes de la vie parisienne section of Balzac's novel sequence La Comédie humaine. In the 1840s, a serial format known as the roman-feuilleton was highly popular in France, and the most acclaimed expression of it was the socialist writing of Eugène Sue. Balzac wanted to challenge Sue's supremacy, and prove himself the most capable feuilleton author in France. Writing quickly and with intense focus, Balzac produced La Cousine Bette, one of his longest novels, in two months. It was published in Le Constitutionnel at the end of 1846, then collected with a companion work, Le Cousin Pons, the following year. The novel's characters represent polarities of contrasting morality. The vengeful Bette and disingenuous Valérie stand on one side, with the merciful Adeline and her patient daughter Hortense on the other. La Cousine Bette is considered Balzac's last great work. His trademark use of realist detail combines with a panorama of characters returning from earlier novels. Several critics have hailed it as a turning point in the author's career, and others have called it a prototypical naturalist text. (more...)

Recently featured: 21st Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry – Clements Markham – Mary Rose

From Wikipedia's newest articles:

• ... that Geyuan Temple's Wenshu Hall (pictured) is the earliest extant wooden building dating from 966 CE during China's Liao Dynasty?
• ... that with 16.33 million American viewers, "Warning, It's Dirty" is the highest-rated episode of Two and a Half Men since "David Copperfield Slipped Me a Roofie", which had 16.52 million viewers?
• ... that after the French ironclad Atalante was condemned in Saigon in 1887, she fell into such a state of disrepair that "she foundered one night and gradually sank into the mud"?
• ... that the States of Maryland and Colorado have laws specifically prohibiting newspaper theft, including the taking of free newspapers, with the intent of preventing another from reading the newspaper?
• ... that U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Graham Martin held George W. Webber implicitly responsible for a mortar attack that killed 32 South Vietnamese children?
• ... that, in 2010, American professional wrestler Scott C. Despres twice defeated Antonio Thomas in the space of a month?
• ... that PWS-3 was the first sports aircraft manufactured by the Polish aerospace industry?
• ... that after Henry Ciccarone called his 1979 squad "the greatest Johns Hopkins lacrosse team ever", Sports Illustrated wrote, "It might be easier to name the most beautiful Miss America"?
  
  Archive – Start a new article – Nominate an article

• Greek investigative journalist Sokratis Giolias is fatally shot in Athens, becoming the first reporter assassinated in Greece since 1985.
• Two trains collide in West Bengal, India, killing more than 60 people and injuring over 160 others.
• In golf, Louis Oosthuizen (pictured) of South Africa wins The Open Championship at St Andrews, Scotland.
• Divers uncover a store of champagne, believed to be the world's oldest, off the coast of the Åland Islands.
• Typhoon Conson makes landfall near Hai Phong, Vietnam, after devastating the Philippines, leaving at least 72 people dead.
• The discovery of Saadanius hijazensis, a fossilised primate closely related to the common ancestor of the Old World monkeys and apes, is announced.
• BP announces that it has temporarily halted the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
  Wikinews – Recent deaths – More current events...

July 22: Pi Approximation Day; Feast day of Mary Magdalene

• 838 – Byzantine–Arab Wars: The forces of the Abbasid Caliphate defeated Byzantine Empire troops, led by Emperor Theophilos himself, at the Battle of Anzen near present-day Dazman, Turkey.
• 1099 – First Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon was elected the first Protector of the Holy Sepulchre in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
• 1793 – Two days after becoming the first recorded European to complete a transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico, Scottish-Canadian explorer Alexander Mackenzie (pictured) reached the westernmost point of his journey and inscribed his name on a rock.
• 1802 – Gia Long conquered Hanoi and unified modern-day Vietnam.
• 1933 – Wiley Post became the first pilot to fly a fixed-wing aircraft solo around the world, landing after a seven-day, nineteen-hour flight at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York City.
• 1934 – Bank robber John Dillinger, whose exploits were sensationalized across the United States, was shot dead by police in an ambush outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago.
• 1946 – A bomb destroyed the headquarters of the British Mandate of Palestine at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing about 90 people and injuring 45 others.
• 2002 – A court in São Paulo sentenced Suzane von Richthofen to 39½ years in prison for parricide.

More anniversaries: July 21 – July 22 – July 23