La Peau de chagrin
When Balzac began writing "Le Père Goriot" in 1834, he had written several dozen books, including a stream of pseudonymously published potboiler novels. In 1829 he published "Les Chouans", the first novel to which he signed his own name; this was followed by "Louis Lambert" (1832), "Le Colonel Chabert" (1832), and "La Peau de chagrin" (1831). Around this time, Balzac began organizing his work into a sequence of novels that he eventually called "La Comédie humaine", divided into sections representing various aspects of life in France during the early 19th century.