Gustave de Beaumont

Beaumont spent his early years in the chateau de La Borde in his birthplace.

In 1826, Beaumont acquired the position of King's Prosecutor at the Tribunal de Première Instance at Versailles.

When the first edition was published, Beaumont, sympathetic to social injustice, was working on another book, Marie, ou l'esclavage aux Etats-Unis (two volumes, 1835), which was a social critique and novel describing the separation of races in a moral society and the conditions of slaves in America.

Beaumont wrote a second book entitled Ireland about two journeys he had made to the area, one with Tocqueville in 1835, and another with his wife in 1837.

His friendship with Tocqueville was dwindling at this time due to political disagreements, and Beaumont's support of a newspaper called Le Siècle caused their differences to come to a head when he refused to accompany Tocqueville and some friends in the adventure of another daily paper.

He and Tocqueville resigned together when the ministry fell, and they retained their views following the coup d'état of 2 December 1851 by withdrawing from public life and refusing to support the imperial regime.

Beaumont took it upon himself to oversee the posthumous publication of his friend's collected works, although he did not live to see the project finished.