 Stanley Kubrick (qv) based his original screenplay on "The Luck of  Barry Lyndon" (republished as the novel "Memoirs of Barry Lyndon,  Esq."), a picaresque tale written in serial form in 1844 by  William Makepeace Thackeray (qv). The serial, which is told in the  first person and "edited" by the fictional George Savage FitzBoodle,  concerns a member of the Irish Irish gentry trying to become a  member of the English aristocracy. Thackeray based the novel on the  life and exploits of the Irish rakehell and fortunehunter Andrew  Robinson Stoney, who married (and subsequently was divorced by) Mary  Eleanor Bowes, the Countess of Strathmore, who became known as "The  Unhappy Countess" due to the tempestuous liaison. The Countess of  Strathmore is one of the ancestors of Queen Elizabeth II (qv). The  revised version, which is the novel that the world generally knows  as "Barry Lyndon", was shorter and tighter than the original  serialization, and dropped the FitzBoodle, Ed. device. It generally  is considered the first "novel without a hero" or novel with an  antihero in the English language. Upon its publication in 1856, it  was entitled by Thackerays publisher "The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon,  Esq. Of The Kingdom Of Ireland Containing An Account of His  Extraordinary Adventures; Misfortunes; His Sufferings In The Service  Of His Late Prussian Majesty; His Visits To Many Courts of Europe;  His Marriage and Splendid Establishments in England And Ireland; And  The Many Cruel Persecutions, Conspiracies And Slanders Of Which He  Has Been A Victim."