Though famed for his vivid depictions of nineteenthcentury Paris Honor de Balzac devoted as much of his creative energy to the provinces. This book examines the way in which he combined a theatrical tradition of antiprovincial satire with a more open celebration of French provincial life in the postRevolutionary period. Ranging widely over texts from both within and outside La Comdie humaine the author analyses Balzacs determination to invest the Rousseauist nostalgia for country over city with an updated rationale. A champion of central authority and absolutist government Balzac is seen here in an unfamiliar role as the guardian of regional culture a novelist who sought to record the diversity of Frances small towns and villages before they were lost to industrialization and the railway age. Equally the study reveals new aspects of his political engagement with questions impacting upon the provinces during the Restoration and July Monarchy from broad issues such as agriculture and landownership to more isolated grievances such as the implications of the 1827 Forest Code. The whole offers a fresh insight into Balzacs thought and literary aesthetic and an assessment of his hithertoneglected role in supporting the emergence of the regionalist novel or roman du terroir in the second half of the nineteenth century.