Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (31 May 1597[1] – 18 February 1654) was a French author in Baroque Précieuses style, best known for his epistolary essays, which were widely circulated and read in his day.

[citation needed] Guez de Balzac's fame rests chiefly upon the Lettres, a second collection of which appeared in 1636.

His letters, though empty and affected in matter, show a real mastery of style, introducing a new clearness and precision into French prose and encouraging the development of the language on national lines by emphasizing its most idiomatic elements.

Balzac has thus the credit of executing in French prose a reform parallel to François de Malherbe's in verse.

In 1631 he published a eulogy of King Louis XIII of France entitled Le Prince; in 1652 the Socrate chrétien, and Aristippe ou de la Cour in 1658.