In the Library
Lost Illusions
Honoré de Balzac, 1843
- Form
- Form Novel
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Demanding
- Reading time
- Reading time 18 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by Ellen Marriage
- Chapters
- Chapters 4
- Length
- Length 246k words
£1.99
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About the book
A young provincial poet arrives in Paris carrying a sheaf of sonnets and a confidence that will not survive the first season. Honoré de Balzac published this novel between 1837 and 1843 as the central pillar of the Comédie humaine, tracking Lucien de Rubempré from Angoulême journalism to literary Paris and back to ruin, while his brother-in-law David Séchard ruins himself more slowly over a paper-mill invention. Balzac knew the territory: he had been a hack, a printer, a bankrupt, before he was a novelist. The book diagrams how reputations are made and unmade, how reviews are bought, how virtue is a luxury the poor cannot afford. The illusions of the title are not Lucien's alone; they belong to the century.