Born: April 22, 1766, Paris, France
Died: July 14, 1817, Paris
Germaine de Staël was a French writer and intellectual, famed for her international salon. Her full name was Anne Louise Germaine, Baronne de Staël-Holstein. Born in Paris and generally known as Madame de Staël, she was the daughter of the French financier and statesman Jacques Necker. In 1786, she married the Swedish minister to France, Eric Magnus, Baron de Staël-Holstein. It was through her own talents, however, that Madame de Staël made her mark on contemporary political and literary affairs. In 1793, fleeing the French Revolution, she took refuge in Switzerland where she conducted a brilliant international salon. Back in France, she drew the condemnation of Napoleon and was forced to leave Paris after the publication of her first novel, Delphine (1802); in 1807 she was exiled again after the publication of Corinne, ou l’Italie (Corinna, or Italy,1807). This novel, centring on the triumphant literary and artistic career of the Anglo-Italian heroine Corinne, became Madame de Staël’s best-known work; it exerted enormous influence on literary women in Europe and the U.S., challenging their aspirations and desire for fame. For the rest of the 19th century, echoes of the novel recurred in fiction.
Madame de Staël is credited with disseminating the theories of romanticism, in such works as De la littérature (1800), important also for its chapter championing women writers, and Germany (1810; trans. 1813), a study of German culture, especially of the period (circa 1765-1785) of Sturm und Drang.
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