Madame de Staël

Staël, Madame de (Anne Louise Germaine Necker; 1766–1817), French-Swiss novelist and critic, celebrated personality, and liberal opponent of Napoleon I's regime. A noted interpreter of German Romanticism, she maintained brilliant salons in Paris until her exile to Geneva. Her major work, On Germany (1810), influenced European culture. She also wrote the novels Delphine (1802) and Corinne (1807). Her memoirs, Ten Years of Exile (1818), is a fascinating account of her times. She had liaisons with Talleyrand and the writer Benjamin Constant.