The Confessions of a Child of the Century

CROWNED BY THE FRENCH ACADEMY Alfred Louis Charles de Musset was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist. After attempts at careers in medicine, law, drawing, English, and piano, he became one of the first Romantic writers. He was the librarian of the French Ministry of the Interior under the July Monarchy, but was dismissed from his post as librarian after the revolution of 1848. He was appointed librarian of the Ministry of Public Instruction during the Second Empire. Musset received the Lgion d'Honneur on April 24, 1845, at the same time as Balzac, and was elected to the Acadmie Franaise in 1852. "The Confessions of a Child of the Century" is an autobiographical novel detailing his two year love affair with the writer George Sand. The relationship between two of the nineteenth century's most headstrong Romanticists took place in the upper realms of French society in the early 1830s. Set against a backdrop of great artistic tumult and social upheaval, with Hugo, Delacroix, Berlioz, Balzac, and Merimee all active, it became the celebrity coupling of their day.