Ellen Glasgow

popular name: Honoré de Balzac

date_of_death: August 18, 1850

age: 51

cause_of_death: Gangrene associated with congestive heart failure

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was one of the most influential writers of 19th-century French literature and a central figure in the development of literary realism. After initially studying law and briefly working in publishing and printing—ventures that left him deeply in debt—Balzac turned seriously to writing in the 1820s. He gained recognition for his ambitious project, La Comédie humaine, a vast collection of interconnected novels and stories that portrayed French society in the decades following the French Revolution and during the Bourbon Restoration. Over his career, Balzac produced more than 90 works, including major novels such as Père Goriot and Eugénie Grandet, which explored themes of ambition, class mobility, wealth, and moral struggle. Known for his intense writing habits—often fueled by large amounts of coffee—Balzac developed richly detailed characters who reappeared across different stories, creating a unified literary universe. Despite constant financial pressures and health problems, he continued writing prolifically until his death in 1850, leaving a body of work that profoundly influenced later novelists and helped shape the modern realist novel.

popular name: Herman Melville

date_of_death: September 28, 1891

age: 72

cause_of_death: Heart disease

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the centennial of his birth in 1919 was the starting point of a Melville revival, and Moby-Dick grew to be considered one of the great American novels.

popular name: Mary Shelley

date_of_death: February 1, 1851

age: 53

cause_of_death: Suspected brain tumor

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Mary Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein (also called The Modern Prometheus 1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft.