The different revolutions that shook Europe since the end of the XVIIIth. Century allowed a certain degree of social mobility; in these societies where the values of the Ancien Régime had been challenged by, the aristocracy was obliged to accept in their salons people coming from the affluent bourgeoisie, and among them a specific type of social climbers, who aspired to an undeserved prestige by associating with higher classes: the snobs.

A number of contemporaneous novels present snobs as a representative creature of this time and are centred on their success or failure in trying to be accepted and recognized in the sphere they admire.