Balzac's humorous exploration of marriage viewed largely through the eyes of a bachelor is one of the great essays of social satire of the nineteenth century. Full of anecdotes and witty aphorisms the book is extraordinarily modern in its defense of the rights of women, particularly when it comes to sex. The present edition is based on the 1829 first edition, and is the ONLY republication of this title using Balzac s original text. The book comes with a full critical apparatus on cd-rom."