Lost Illusions
Lucien Chardon, a druggist's son in Angoulême who writes sonnets and has taken his mother's noble name, is carried off to Paris by the local great lady and dropped there inside a fortnight. He learns the trade of the newspapers, where a review is bought and a reputation broken to order, while at home his brother-in-law David Séchard ruins himself trying to patent a cheaper paper. The longest thing Balzac wrote and the one he thought his best, and the founding account of literary Paris as a market.
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Lineage
- companion to ↑ Père Goriot
- ↓ A Harlot High and Low
Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
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Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 56% · 13 shared
- 55% · 15 shared
- 53% · 14 shared
- 51% · 15 shared
- 49% · 11 shared
- 47% · 12 shared