The Marquis de Custine was born in 1790 into an anti-revolutionary background, and brought up in exile by his mother and her lover, Chateaubriand (both his father and grandfather had been guillotined). As a young man he was banished from polite society as a result of a homosexual scandal, but remained a close friend of Stendhal and Balzac and was admired by Baudelaire for his dandyism. In 1835, when de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" became a bestseller, Balzac suggested that Custine should do for European perceptions of Russia what de Tocqueville had done for America. Custine went to Russia a monarchist and legitimist, but returned a constitutionalist. His "Lettres de Russie" (1839) invited comparison with de Tocqueville's "Anatomy of the Astute" .
- ISBN10 1590175344
- ISBN13 9781590175347
- Publish Date 10 May 2014 (first published 30 May 1991)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint New York Review of Books
- Format eBook
- Pages 317
- Language English