Lucien Leuwen

work by Stendhal

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Article History

Lucien Leuwen, unfinished novel by Stendhal, published posthumously in 1894. It is perhaps Stendhal’s most autobiographical work. The book follows the career of Lucien, the title character, the son of a banker, from his expulsion from the École Polytechnique because of his idealism, through his military career (during which he falls in love with and is forced to renounce a young widow, Mme de Chasteller), to his career in government service in Paris. In the last section, which was never written, Stendhal had planned to show Lucien in Italy and to resolve the story with a happy ending based on the return of Mme de Chasteller.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.