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Play, download and edit the free audio Lost Illusions: Two Poets.

"description": "LibriVox recording of Lost Illusions: Two Poets by Honoré de Balzac. (Translated by Ellen Marriage.)
Read in English by Bruce Pirie

Two Poets (1837) is the first book in Balzac\u2019s Lost Illusions trilogy, which is part of his sweeping set of novels collectively titled La Comédie Humaine. The story is set in post-Napoleonic France, when the new bourgeoisie was jostling for position alongside the old aristocracy. We meet Lucien Chardon, a young provincial who romantically aspires to be a poet, and his friend David Séchard, who struggles to manage his father\u2019s printing shop and falls in love with Lucien\u2019s sister Eve. The picture of provincial life that emerges is laced with greed, ambition, and duplicity.

Balzac\u2019s work was hugely influential in the development of realism in fiction, and indeed in creating our sense of 19th-century European culture. Oscar Wilde archly said, \u201cThe 19th century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac\u2019s.\u201d The Lost Illusions trilogy is one of his greatest achievements, and is named in the reference work 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. The two other volumes in the trilogy are A Distinguished Provincial at Paris (1839) and Eve and David (1843). (Summary by Bruce Pirie)

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