Selected Poems

Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay (1810–1857) poet, novelist, and dramatist, better known as Alfred de Musset, was born in Paris to an upper-class but not particularly wealthy family. After attempting various careers he published, in 1829, a first collection of poems, Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie (Tales of Spain and Italy), which was influenced by the Romantic movement. Posing as a dandy in the style of Beau Brummell, he led a dissipated life, which adversely affected his reputation. He gives a version of his celebrated relationship with George Sand (the pen-name of Amantine Dupin de Francueil), from 1833 to 1835, which continued intermittently until 1839, in his semi-autobiographical novel La Confession d’un Enfant du Siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century, 1836). De Musset held the post of librarian to the Ministry of the Interior under the July Monarchy, but was dismissed after the 1848 Revolution, though later, in 1853, he was appointed librarian of the Ministry of Public Instruction. Meanwhile he had been awarded the Légion d’honneur, at the same time as Balzac, and had been elected to the Académie Française in 1852 after two failed attempts in 1848 and 1850. He died in Paris in 1857, the official cause being heart failure, which was due to a combination of alcoholism and aortic insufficiency.

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