Alphonse-Marie-Louis de Prat de Lamartine (1790-1869), French Romantic poet, essayist and statesman. Born to an aristocratic family, Lamartine was educated at Lyons and later at the Jesuit college at Belley. His first published work, Méditations poétiques (1820), was a success and it was followed by many other collections, including Nouvelles Méditations (1823), La Mort de Socrate (1823) and Les Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (1830). Alongside his poetic success, Lamartine spent some years working as a diplomat in Naples and Italy. In the 1830s he became a politician and was elected to the Chamber in 1833. He was a noted orator and his political ambitions resulted in his crucial role in the provisional government during the 1848 revolution (see France, New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, p.435). His political position has been described as based on a 'lofty, if none too practical, conception of a society free from base self-interest and dedicated to ideals of liberty and justice' ( Reid, Concise Oxford Dictionary of French Literature, p.331).