The Luck of Barry Lyndon is a picaresque novel about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy. Redmond Barry of Ballybarry, born to a genteel but ruined Irish family, fancies himself a gentleman. At the prompting of his mother, he learns what he can of courtly manners and swordplay. He is a hot-tempered, passionate lad, and falls madly in love with his cousin, Nora. As she is a spinster a few years older than Redmond, she is seeking a prospect with more ready cash to pay family debts. The lad tries to engage in a duel with Nora's suitor, an English officer named John Quin. Barry is made to think that he has assassinated the man, so he flees to Dublin, where he quickly falls in with bad company in the way of con artists, and soon loses all his money. Pursued by creditors, he enlists as a soldier in a British Army infantry regiment headed for service in Germany. His run of bad luck continues when he tries to desert, and he gets captured by Prussian officer, but Barry's temper and relentlessness keep his head above the ground as he never stops to fight in order to find his fortune.
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