La Peau de chagrin
When he developed his scheme for organizing all of his novels and stories into a single sequence called "La Comédie humaine", Balzac placed "La Peau de chagrin" at the start of the section called "Études philosophiques" ("Philosophical Studies"). Like the other works in this category – including the similarly autobiographical "Louis Lambert" (1832) – it deals with philosophy and the supernatural. But it also provides a bridge to the realism of the "Études des mœurs" ("Study of Manners"), where the majority of his novels were located.