Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) was a Swiss-born French nobleman, writer and politician. The only novel published by Constant during his lifetime, Adolphe is the story of a young indecisive man's disastrous love affair with an older woman of uncertain virtue, believed to be based on Constant's affair with Anna Lindsay, who describes the affair in her correspendence. The Red Notebook (translated by Norman Cameron) is fictionalized version of Constant's youth, education and travels to England.