Honoré de Balzac (1799 - 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie Humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus. Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Jack Kerouac, and Henry James, filmmakers Akira Kurosawa and Eric Rohmer as well as important philosophers such as Friedrich Engels. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and they continue to inspire other writers. Ellen Marriage (1865 - 1946) was an English translator from French, notably of Balzac's novels. She put an effort into readability and accuracy that was unusual in translators of her period. A. R. Waller, a critic who was a neighbour of the Marriage family, suggested she do translations when he proposed to the London publisher J. M. Dent that his firm embark on the first complete edition of Balzac's immense novel cycle La Comédie humaine. Hitherto only a few of the novels had appeared in the United Kingdom singly. George Saintsbury was appointed editor and work began. Forty volumes duly appeared between 1895 and 1898, although five others were omitted as too shocking for Victorian English tastes. Marriage, under her own name and under the pseudonym James Waring for some of the "bolder works", did most of the translation, except for 13 volumes done by Clara Bell (1834-1927) and one volume done by Rachel Scott.