In response to an ever-increasing number of written suggestions that there be a larger representation of the novels of Balzac in the Modern Library, the editors have chosen for inclusion in the series two of his most famous works of fiction: Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet.  In brand-new translations, the first by E. K. Brown of Chicago University, and the second by Dorothea Walter and John Watkins, this portion  of the massive structure of the Human Comedy belongs among the world’s  greatest novels of creative imagination and social criticism.