[1] Balzac may have been inspired to write La Vendetta by Prosper Mérimée, whose novel Mateo Falcone, which was serialized by the Revue de Paris in 1829, also deals with the subject of Corsican vengeance and family honour.

The manuscript of La Vendetta, which is preserved in the Lovenjoul Collection of the Institut de France in Paris,[2] is in three separate parts: L'Atelier (The Artist's Workshop), La Désobéissance (The Act of Disobedience) and Le Mariage (The Marriage).

The novel was completed in Paris in January 1830, when Balzac was assisting the Duchesse d'Abrantès with her Mémoires de l'Empire.

In July 1835 Mme Béchet published a third edition of La Vendetta as part of a twelve-volume collection of Balzac's works entitled Etude de Moeurs au XIXe siècle (Studies of Manners in the 19th Century).

In this edition La Vendetta was no longer divided into sections and was placed at the end of the first volume.

Over the following years the pair eke out a miserable existence, dogged by hunger and poverty, while Ginevra's wealthy father refuses to lift a hand to support her: it is as much as he can do to refrain from murdering Luigi.