The Luck of Barry Lyndon

The Luck of Barry Lyndon is a picaresque novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first serialized in 1844 and later revised as The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.

Redmond Barry grows up in a proud but impoverished Irish family and imagines himself entitled to rank and admiration. A disappointed courtship and a duel send him abroad, where he passes through British and Prussian military service during the Seven Years' War before learning to survive as a gambler and adventurer.

He eventually pursues the wealthy Countess of Lyndon, takes her name, and spends her fortune in an effort to force his way into the aristocracy. Barry narrates every betrayal, act of violence, and financial disaster as evidence of his courage or injured dignity.

The gap between his self-portrait and his conduct drives Thackeray's satire. The novel turns a rake's rise and fall into a study of class ambition, masculine vanity, and the stories people tell to make exploitation look like good fortune.

"Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it. Ever since ours was a family (and that must be very near Adam’s time—so old, noble, and illustrious are the Barrys, as everybody knows) women have played a mighty part with the destinies of our race."