During the 19th century, the course of literature ran alongside the world of journalism: newspapers were largely produced by writers, as, for instance, Théophile Gautier, who was a renowned art critic.
Novels, dramas or poetry might be published in the press before being edited as a whole, providing the author an opportunity to sell his work twice.
Balzac himself was involved in the media: he was a contributor to literary journals, editor-in-chief and owner of Chronique de Paris in addition to being the first ever writer of serialised novels. Often at the short end of the stick in these affairs, Balzac was to draw on these experiences for inspiration, particularly in Illusions perdues, where the press is central to the plot. The author delivers a scathing critique of journalists, whom he presents as corrupt and superficial.
‘”Blondet is right,” said Claude Vignon. “Journalism, so far from being in the hands of a priesthood, came to be first a party weapon, and then a commercial speculation, carried on without conscience or scruple, like other commercial speculations. Every newspaper, as Blondet says, is a shop to which people come for opinions of the right shade. If there were a paper for hunchbacks, it would set forth plainly, morning and evening, in its columns, the beauty, the utility, and necessity of deformity. A newspaper is not supposed to enlighten its readers, but to supply them with congenial opinions. Give any newspaper time enough, and it will be base, hypocritical, shameless, and treacherous; the periodical press will be the death of ideas, systems, and individuals; nay, it will flourish upon their decay.”’
Honoré de Balzac, Illusions perdues, 1836 (Translation Ellen Marriage)
Criticism begets criticism, and Illusions perdues was trashed by the press. In Le Corsaire, journal des spectacles de la literature, des arts et des modes, one journalist presented the novel as a ‘disgusting and cynical book, a petty vengeance against the press on the part of M. Balzac.’
Balzac never ceased to rail against the power of journalists, their taste for manipulation and the arbitrary of their judgement, concluding in his 1842 pamphlet Monographie de la presse Parisienne: ‘If the Press did not exist it would be necessary not to invent it.’
