Alphonse de Lamartine

A major Romanticist poet, Lamartine also helped end slavery and the death penalty in France. Arago was a political colleague. Dumas père, Musset, Vigny, Sainte-Beuve and Hugo were fellow-members of Nodier’s salon, Nodier, Sainte-Beuve and (especially) Hugo corresponding after he retreated to Mâcon. He met Chateaubriand (another grandee politician) when visiting London, while Dickens visited him in Paris. He admired Balzac, whose works had sustained him through an illness, while Mistral (gratefully) and Pélissier both dedicated works to him. Liszt stayed with him, but was embarrassed by his marital arrangements.