Firm Heart and Capacious Mind

Book excerpt: Firm Heart and Capacious Mind: The Life and Friends of Etienne Dumont is the first full-length biography of a Renaissance man, the statesman/publicist/jurist/political writer/man of letters who was hailed by Goethe, Macauley and Stendhal as one of the great intellects of his time. Among other activities he advised Mirabeau (he leader of the National Assembly) in the French Revolution, introduced Jeremy Bentham to the world by publishing ten volumes edited and rewritten from Bentham's notes, and led the political struggle that turned Geneva into a democracy. Dumont also played a direct role in such social reforms as the abolition of slavery, corresponding with and advising Samuel Romilly, William Wiberforce and others. A confirmed bachelor, he was admired and at times loved by some of the most prominent women of his time: Lady Holland, Madame de Stael and Maria Edgeworth. There has been no other full-length work, and no book at all in English, on this remarkable man.