It is one of the last of the 94 works of Honoré de Balzac’s The Human Comedy, which are in both novel and short story form. Begun in 1846 as a novella, or long-short story, it was envisaged as one part of a diptych, Les Parents pauvres (The Poor Relations), the other part of which was La Cousine Bette (Cousin Bette). The novella grew in 1847 into a full-length novel with a male poor relation, Pons, as its subject, whereas La Cousine Bette describes the female aspect of that subordinate relationship. The novella was based on a short story by an acquaintance of Balzac, Albéric Second,

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.