Alfred de Musset

Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), French poet of the romantic movement, born in Paris, where he briefly studied law and medicine. His first collection of verse, Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie (Romances of Spain and Italy, 1829), was successfully published when he was 19 years old. His first play, Nuit Venitienne (Venetian Night, 1830), was a failure, but Les caprices de Marianne (The Caprices of Marianne, 1833) and On ne badine pas avec l'amour (No Trifling with Love, 1834) are witty, romantic, and bittersweet comedies of manners that have remained in the classic repertory of French theater. In 1833 he met and fell in love with the French writer George Sand. He traveled with her to Italy, but after a prolonged series of quarrels he returned to France alone in 1834. His autobiographical novel La confession d'un enfant du siècle (Confessions of a Child of the Century, 1836) deals with this relationship as well as with the author's artistic and political philosophy of disillusionment.

Critics usually point to his lyrics as de Musset's most important work. These include the four well-known Nights (“La nuit de mai,””La nuit de décembre,””La nuit d'août,” and “La nuit d'octobre”), first published between 1835 and 1837 in the periodical Revue des Deux Mondes. In English, The Complete Works of Alfred de Musset was published in a ten-volume edition in 1905.