It is an 1837 novel by Honoré de Balzac as part of his series La Comédie humaine. Its main character is a Parisian perfumer who achieves success in the cosmetics business, but becomes bankrupt due to property speculation. The novel is a partly satirical, partly sympathetic portrayal of the Parisian middle class.

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled Human Comedy, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon Bonaparte.Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multifaceted characters, who are morally ambiguous.