Why did I write Romantic Illusions? While still a child, I lost my mother’s care and my father’s instruction. As a student I was lazy and much given to dissipation. After I grew up, I became enamored of the brothel scene and almost perished in its seductive trap. Over the course of thirty-odd years I met with more instances of beauty, ugliness, passion, and heartlessness than I could possibly enumerate. I squandered large sums of money—and got in return a quantity of false love and affection. When I came to ponder the meaning of that experience, I saw romance as an illusion, and so in a playful mood I began to write about it, naming my book Romantic Illusions. Perhaps it will frighten fools and awaken others, thereby helping me to atone a little for my misdeeds, and perhaps it will stand as a warning to posterity not to follow my sorry example.

—FROM THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE (1848)