Alfred de Musset

Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) was a French Romantic poet, playwright, and novelist born into an aristocratic Parisian family. Admitted to Victor Hugo's Cénacle at only nineteen, Musset distinguished himself through dazzling verbal facility, romantic passion, and witty, cynical detachment from orthodox Romantic solemnity.

Musset achieved renown for his intense, tempestuous romantic liaison with novelist George Sand in Venice, fictionalized in his autobiographical novel La Confession d'un enfant du siècle ('The Confession of a Child of the Century'), which diagnosed the post-Napoleonic generation's existential malaise (mal du siècle). In drama, his armchair plays (Spectacle dans un fauteuil), including the masterpiece Lorenzaccio and On ne badine pas avec l'amour, made him one of France's greatest playwrights.