Anne Louise Germaine de Staël

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (April 22, 1766 – July 14, 1817) was a French author who determined literary tastes of Europe at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Salons at Coppet and Paris

She betook herself to Coppet, and there gathered round her a considerable number of friends and fellow-refugees, the beginning of the quasi-court which at intervals during the next five-and-twenty years made the place so famous. In 1793, however, she made a visit of some length to England, and established herself at Mickleham in Surrey as the centre of the Moderate Liberal emigrants: Talleyrand, Narbonne, Jaucourt and others. There was not a little scandal about her relations with Narbonne; and this Mickleham sojourn (the details of which are known from, among other sources, the letters of Fanny Burney) has never been altogether satisfactorily accounted for.

Related Topics:
Coppet - 1793 - England - Mickleham - Surrey - Talleyrand - Narbonne - Jaucourt - Fanny Burney

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In the summer she returned to Coppet and wrote a pamphlet on the queen's execution. The next year her mother died, and the fall of Robespierre opened the way back to Paris. Her husband(whose mission had been in abeyance and himself in Holland for three years) was accredited to the French republic by the regent of Sweden; his wife reopened her salon and for a time was conspicuous in the motley and eccentric society of the Directory. She also published several small works, the chief being an essay Sur l'influence des passions (1796), and another Sur la litérature considéré dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800).

Related Topics:
Holland - Directory

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It was during these years that Mme de Staël was of chief political importance. Narbonne's place had been supplied by Benjamin Constant, whom she first met at Coppet in 1794, and who had a very great influence over her, as in return she had over him. Both personal and political reasons threw her into opposition to Bonaparte. Her own preference for a moderate republic or a constitutional monarchy was quite sincere, and, even if it had not been so, her own character and Napoleon's were too much alike in some points to admit of their getting on together. For some years, however, she was able to alternate between Coppet and Paris without difficulty, though not without knowing that the First Consul disliked her. In 1797 she, as above mentioned, separated formally from her husband. In 1799 he was recalled by the king of Sweden, and in 1802 he died, duly attended by her. Besides the eldest son Auguste Louis, they had two other children - a son Albert, and a daughter Albertine, who afterwards became the duchesse de Broglie.

Related Topics:
Benjamin Constant - 1794 - Bonaparte - 1802 - Broglie

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