Thetext is accompanied by an introduction, textual annotations by theeditor, and a map of Paris."Responses: Contemporaries and Other Novelists" illustrates Balzac'simmense influence on other writers, among them Charles Baudelaire,Hippolyte Taine, Émile Zola, and Marcel Proust."Twentieth-Century Criticism" presents a superb selection of criticalwriting about the novel.The critics include Ernst Robert Curtius, Albert Béguin, ErichAuerback, Georges Poulet, Michel Butor, Louis Chevalier, PierreBarbéris, Peter Brooks, Sandy Petrey, Nicole Mozet, and Janet L. Beizer.