Although in this century the appeal of his poetry has finally been eclipsed by the charm of his theater, at the height of his popularity in his own time Alfred de Musset was known chiefly as a lyric poet of intensely personal verse. Although with time his literary tastes became increasingly conservative, for his contemporaries he was indelibly associated with the exuberant Romanticism of his earliest poems.

By turns sentimental and sarcastic, idealistic and cynical, this mercurial and reputedly most Parisian of all French poets was born into an established family well known for its literary antecedents. Louis-Charles-Alfred de Musset-Pathay was born on 11 December 1810; he was the second son of Victor de Musset-Pathay, a civil servant who was considered an authority on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and who before his early death prepared an authoritative edition of Rousseau's complete works. Musset's maternal grandfather, Claude-Antoine Guyot-Desherbiers, was a witty raconteur and...