Synopsis
A neglected novel by a major writer of the 19th century.
Library Journal
Sand's sympathetic portrayals of the people won her adoration by her readers during her lifetime and scorn by the critics. In this novel about love surpassing conventional barriersdeemed too revolutionary during its day (the early 1840s) for wide dissemination and only now translated into EnglishSand lets rip her radical views on egalitarianism of the classes and equality between the sexes. Set in Paris during the student unrest against the bourgeois king, Louis-Philippe, in 1832, Horace concerns the coming-of-age of a law student from a provincial family whose head is utterly turned by the opportunities in the big city to better himself both in fortune and in love. Horace is smooth but vain and boastful; he wins the lovely grisette Marthe because he must have passion and the Viscountess de Chailly because he must have glory, though in the end he loses his honor. While some of the characters, such as Marthe, are bland paradigms of working-class virtue, others, like Horace and the Viscountess, have teeth: they were evidently modeled on people in Sand's life. A delicious novel to prompt a revival of her work.Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"