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Cousin Betty
Honoré de Balzac · 1846 · Romance, Drama & Literary
Paris, 1838. Lisbeth Fischer — poor relation of the brilliant Hulot family — has swallowed her humiliations for years. When the man she secretly loves is taken from her, she allies with the ravishing Valérie Marneffe to engineer, patiently and invisibly, the ruin of them all.
Inside this edition
Every LitLab edition is illustrated from the text itself — the world of the book mapped, its people drawn, its scenes staged. 21 plates are open to everyone in this book; here are 8 of them.
The World of Cousin Betty: a conceptual web of money, vanity, desire and revenge.
The Hulot Family
A Map of Connections
The Characters: the full cast of Cousin Betty in 1840s Paris.
Baron Hector Hulot, the great man undone by women.
Lisbeth Fischer, called Cousin Betty — the poor relation who never forgave.
In the attic: Cousin Betty's secret devotion to the young sculptor.
The atelier: the dawning love of Hortense and Wenceslas.
This edition
- Title
- Cousin Betty
- Author
- Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850)
- First published
- 1846
- Illustrated plates
- 75 original artworks · 21 open to everyone
- Chapters
- 36 · about 154,895 words
- Reading time
- 10 h 20 min
- Language
- EN
- Formats
- Read online · EPUB and PDF download with a subscription
- Publisher
- LitLab — The Illustrated Classics
- On LitLab since
- July 2026
- Rights
- Text in the public domain. Illustrations and edition © LitLab.
- Source text
- Project Gutenberg #1749
Neighbours in the library
Chosen by what they share with Cousin Betty — the same author, the same genre.