Benjamin Constant

<p><em>`For forty years I have defended the same principle: freedom in everything in religion in philosophy in literature in industry in politics - and by freedom I mean the triumph of the individual.'</em><br> Constant thus summarized his beliefs at the end of his life. A political theorist and a passionate defender of individual liberty he was also the author of one of the greatest French novels of psychological insight <em>Adolphe</em>. In a major new biography Dennis Wood traces the development of Constant as a writer centrally preoccupied with the problematics of freedom not only in the fields of politics and religious belief but also in his own troubled relationship with several women.</p>