Book description
Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly
ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he
is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de
Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way in the glamorous beau monde of
Paris. But Lucien has entered a world far more dangerous than he
realized, as Madame de Bargeton's reputation becomes compromised and the
fickle, venomous denizens of the courts and salons conspire to keep him
out of their ranks. Lucien eventually learns that, wherever he goes,
talent counts for nothing in comparison to money, intrigue and
unscrupulousness. Lost Illusions is one of the greatest novels in the
rich procession of the Comedie humaine, Balzac's panoramic social and
moral history of his times. Balzac was born in 1799, the son of a
civil servant. At the age of thirty - heavily in debt and with an
unsucessful past behind him - he started work on the first of what were
to become a total of ninety novels and short stories that make up The
Human Comedy. He died in 1850.
