Publisher's Synopsis
The Lily of the Valley is an 1835 novel about love and society by French best-selling novelist Honoré de Balzac. It concerns the affection - emotionally vibrant but never consummated - between Felix de Vandenesse and Henriette de Mortsauf. This latter 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.
