Constant, Benjamin
Constant, Benjamin ( Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque ) ( 1767 – 1830 ),French novelist, political philosopher, and politician, born at Lausanne of a family of French Protestant origins, who had his university education at Oxford (briefly), in Germany, and at Edinburgh. He was intermittently in Paris after 1795 and held office under the Consulate, but went into exile in 1803 . From Hanover he published the anti-Napoleonic pamphlet ‘De l'esprit de conquête et de l'usurpation’ ( 1813 ). His political career in the Liberal opposition begins after the Restoration. Constant is remembered for the political and religious treatises De la religion considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements (5 vols, 1824 – 31 ), but much more for the literary masterpiece Adolphe (first published in London in 1816 ), a short novel of psychological analysis reflecting at some points his own liaison with...
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