Ewelina Hańska Ewelina Hańska Eveline Hańska (Ewelina, née Rzewuska, 6 January c. 1805 – 11 April 1882) was a Polish noblewoman best known for her marriage to French novelist Honoré de Balzac. Born at the Wierzchownia estate in Volhynia, (now Ukraine) Hańska married landowner Wacław Hański (Wenceslas Hanski) when she was a teenager. Hański, who was about 20 years her senior, suffered from depression. They had five children, but only a daughter, Anna, survived. In the late 1820s, Hańska began reading Balzac's novels, and in 1832, she sent him an anonymous letter. This began a decades-long correspondence in which Hańska and Balzac
Adrienne Thomas (novelist) Adrienne Thomas (novelist) Adrienne Thomas was the pseudonym of Hertha A. Deutsch, "nee" Strauch (1897–1980), a German autobiographical novelist. Hertha Strauch was born in St Avold in Alsace-Lorraine, then part of Germany, on June 24, 1897. She grew up bilingual in German and French, going to school in Metz, where her family owned a small department store. During World War I she became a nurse for the Red Cross, at first in Metz and later in Berlin, where her family moved. During the 1920s she trained as a singer and actor at the Clara Lion Conservatory in Frankfurt. Writing as