\b0 Franτois RenΘ vicomte de Chateaubriand was born in \b \ATXul1024 \cf4 \ATXht100 Saint-Malo
\b0 \ATXul0 \cf0 \ATXht0 in Brittany in 1768. Drawn to a career in the army, he became a non-commissioned office but took exception to the Revolution. He traveled to America and then went into exile in England (1793). Returning to France in 1800, he wrote
his first works describing his stay in America (\i Atala\i0 ) and praising religion (\i La gΘnie du Christianisme\i0 ) (\i The Genius of the Christianity\i0 ), establishing himself as one of the forerunners of French Romanticism. Under the Restoration,
he pursued a brilliant career as a diplomat, which he gave up at the time of the revolution of 1830. His masterpiece remains the \i MΘmoires d'outre-tombe \i0 (\i Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb\i0 ), published after his death in 1848 but written between 18
09 and 1841 in a French that he had mastered to perfection and describing a life spanning two centuries with a rare gift for evocation.\par
