Lost Illusions

Lucien Chardon, a handsome, gifted young poet in the provincial town of Angoulême, is taken up by an aristocratic lady, Madame de Bargeton, and follows her to Paris, dreaming of literary fame. There he discovers a world of journalism where reviews are bought and sold and reputations are made and destroyed overnight, and talent counts for less than intrigue. Torn between a circle of honest young writers who befriend him and the corrupt press, he chooses success and pays dearly, while at home his loyal friend David Séchard, a printer and inventor, is ruined.

Honoré de Balzac published the three parts of the novel, Two Poets, A Distinguished Provincial at Paris and Eve and David, all included here, between 1837 and 1843, and he considered it the centrepiece of his Human Comedy. Its portrait of the press is among the sharpest ever written. Ellen Marriage's translation covers all three parts. Read also Father Goriot.

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was born in Tours, trained as a lawyer and failed as a printer and publisher, leaving debts that pursued him all his life. To pay them he wrote at night, fuelled by enormous quantities of coffee, producing nearly a hundred novels and stories in twenty years.

He gathered them into The Human Comedy, a vast portrait of French society with characters who reappear from book to book; Eugénie Grandet is one of its best-known parts. After eighteen years of letters he married the Polish countess Ewelina Hańska, months before his death.