Father Goriot

Father Goriot (Le Père Goriot in French) is about an old man, Goriot, who has sacrificed his wealth to provide a comfortable living for his two daughers Delphine and Anastasie. He shares a boarding house with the social climber Rastignac, and a political agitator named Vautrin. Goriot supports the interests of Rastignac in his daughter, but she rejects his advances, and even worse, she and her sister ignore Father Goriot when he most needs them. Le Père Goriot was published in 1834/1835 in serial format, and is widely considered to be one of Balzac's most important novels. It is the first novel in which he uses seriously uses characters from previous books in his La Comédie humaine series (a technique which was to become a characteristic of his writing).