Lamartine's impressions of Malta

Abstract

Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (October 1790 - February 1869) was one of the outstanding French poets of the Romantic movement, the first of the truly important ones. A native of the town of Macon, he was descended from a family of Franc-Comtois landowners. Lamartine was a versatile figure who was not only a creative writer but also a noted statesman and orator. He was educated at Lyons and later at the Jesuit college at Belley, where he spent the years from 1803 to 1807. In June 1820 he married at Chambery a young Englishwoman named Anna Eliza Birch, whom he called 'Matianne' and who was a person of some means. Shortly thereafter he left for Naples, where he served as an artache of the French Legation. Also during the 1820' s he served in the French embassy in London and in Tuscany. King Charles X in 1825 bestowed upon him the cross of the Legion of Honor, a distinction the recipient shared with another Romantic writer, Victor Hugo.