Editing Benjamin Constant (section)

==Novels==
Constant published only one novel during his lifetime, ''[[Adolphe]]'' (1816), the story of a young, indecisive man's disastrous love affair with an older mistress. A first-person novel in the sentimentalist tradition, ''Adolphe'' examines the thoughts of the young man as he falls in and out of love with Ellenore, a woman of uncertain virtue. Constant began the novel as an autobiographical tale of two loves, but decided that the reading public would object to serial passions. The love affair depicted in the finished version of the novel is thought to be based on Constant's affair with Anna Lindsay, who describes the affair in her correspondence (published in the ''Revue des Deux Mondes'', December 1930 – January 1931). The book has been compared to [[Chateaubriand]]'s ''René'' or [[Mme de Stael]]'s ''Corinne''.<ref name="ReferenceA" /> As a young man, Constant became acquainted with a literary friend of his uncle, [[David-Louis Constant de Rebecque]]. She was [[Isabelle de Charrière]], a Dutch woman of letters with whom he jointly wrote an [[epistolary novel]], under the title, ''Les Lettres d'Arsillé fils, Sophie Durfé et autres''.<ref>Wood, Dennis. ''Isabelle de Charrière et Benjamin Constant. À propos d'une découverte récente''. [Sur ''Les Lettres d'Arsillé fils, Sophie Durfé et autres'', roman écrit par Benjamin Constant et Madame de Charrière.] In : ''Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century''; 215. (Oxford, [[Voltaire Foundation]], 1982), {{pp.|273–279}}.
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