C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869)
Lamartine, Alphonse Marie Louis de (lä-mär-tēn’). A celebrated French poet; born at Milly, near Macon, Oct. 21, 1790; died at Passy, March 1, 1869. His first volume of poems, ‘Poetical Meditations’ (1820), was in effect a new departure in French lyrism expressing sympathy with nature and with religious sentiment which accorded with the then new reaction against materialism. Then followed: ‘New Poetical Meditations’ (1823); ‘Poetic and Religious Harmonies’ (1830); ‘Recollections, Impressions, and Reflections’ (4 vols., 1835); ‘Jocelyn’ (1836), an idyllic epos in which he reaches the summit of his poetic inspiration; ‘The Fall of an Angel’ (1838), an imitation of Byron; ‘History of the Girondins’ (8 vols., 1847); ‘Confidences’ (1849); ‘New Confidences’ (1851); ‘History of the Restoration’ (8 vols., 1852); ‘Lettres à L.’ (1818–65). (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).