Constant de Rebecque, (Henri) Benjamin (1767–1830)

Swiss-born French writer and politician. An advocate of the Revolution, he opposed Napoleon and in 1803 went into exile. Returning to Paris after the fall of Napoleon in 1814, he proposed a constitutional monarchy. He published the autobiographical novel Adolphe (1816), which reflects his affair with Madame de Staël and is one of the first analytical novels of modern literature.

Constant de Rebecque was born in Lausanne, Switzerland; his parents were Huguenots who settled in Paris at the beginning of the Revolution. The influence of Madame de Staël and Talleyrand-Périgord is apparent in his Mélanges de littérature et de politique (1829).

He also wrote the Cours de politique constitutionnelle (1818–20); the monumental study De la Religion (1825–31); Cahier rouge (1907), a masterly account of his youth; Cécile, a fragmentary story, published in 1951; and the Journaux intimes published in full in 1952.