The diary of the two de Goncourt brothers who were novelists, critics and dilettanti of Parisian literary and fashionable circles during the second half of the 19th century. The brothers were opposite in temperament, yet identical in tastes and desires and wrote their "nightly confession" as the effusion of a single ego, exploring their suspicions, neuroses and occasional spite, revealing an honest, uninhibitedly perceptive document. They evoke the liveliness of the "belle epoque" of Parisian life, art, politics, society, women in their confessions as well as discussing well-known figures, including Flaubert, Gautier, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Rodin, Degas, Baudelaire and Sainte-Beuve.