Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (1790 – 1869) was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.
During his term as a politician in the Second Republic (1848), he led efforts that eventually led to the abolition of slavery and the death penalty, as well as the enshrinement of the right to work and the short-lived national workshop programs. A political idealist who supported democracy and pacifism, his moderate stance on most issues caused many of his followers to desert him. He was an unsuccessful candidate to the presidential election of 10 December 1848, receiving fewer than 19,000 votes. He subsequently retired from politics and dedicated himself to literature.
Lamartine made his entrance into the field of poetry by a masterpiece, Les Méditations Poétiques (1820). He was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1825. He worked for the French embassy in Italy from 1825 to 1828. In 1829, he was elected a member of the Académie française. He was elected a deputy in 1833. In 1835 he published the Voyage en Orient, an account of the journey he had just made, in royal luxury, to the countries of the Orient, and in the course of which he had lost his only daughter. Both of these works are included in this volume.
He published volumes on the most varied subjects (history, criticism, personal confidences, literary conversations) especially during the Empire, when, having retired to private life and having become the prey of his creditors, he condemned himself to what he calls "literary hard-labor in order to exist and pay his debts". Lamartine ended his life in poverty, publishing monthly installments of the Cours familier de littérature to support himself. He died in Paris in 1869.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_de_Lamartine
Ed. complète en un volume
