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Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (née Necker; 22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817), commonly known as Madame de Staël (French: [madam də stal]), was a prominent philosopher, woman of letters, and political theorist in both Parisian and Geneva intellectual circles. She was the daughter of banker and French finance minister Jacques Necker and Suzanne Curchod, a respected salonist and writer. Throughout her life, she held a moderate stance during the tumultuous periods of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, persisting until the time of the French Restoration.

Legacy: Albertine Necker de Saussure, married to de Staël’s cousin, wrote her biography in 1821 and published it as part of the collected works. Auguste Comte included Mme de Staël in his 1849 Calendar of Great Men. “In one version of the calendar, the 24th day of the month of Dante is dedicated to Madame de Staël, who finds herself among such poets as Milton, Cervantes, and Chaucer. In another version, Staël finds herself honored, instead, on the 19th day of the tenth month, known as “Shakespeare,” among the likes of Goethe, Racine, Voltaire, and Madame de Sévigné.” Her political legacy has been generally identified with a stout defence of “liberal” values: equality, individual freedom, and the limitation of state power by constitutional rules. “Yet although she insisted to the Duke of Wellington that she needed politics in order to live, her attitude towards the propriety of female political engagement varied: at times she declared that women should simply be the guardians of domestic space for the opposite sex, while at others, that denying women access to the public sphere of activism and engagement was an abuse of human rights. This paradox partly explains the persona of the “homme-femme” she presented in society, and it remained unresolved throughout her life.”

Comte’s disciple Frederic Harrison wrote about de Staël that her novels “precede the works of Walter Scott, Byron, Mary Shelley, and partly those of Chateaubriand, their historical importance is great in the development of modern Romanticism, of the romance of the heart, the delight in nature, and in the arts, antiquities, and history of Europe.”

Letters to Jefferson: In 1807, Jacques Le Ray de Chaumont sent Jefferson a copy of Corinne, and also conveyed to Staël Jefferson’s first letter addressed to her. This marked the beginning of a series of eight letters between the two, the last of which was sent from Staël to Jefferson shortly before her passing in 1817. The correspondence between Staël and Jefferson sheds light upon the fascinating relationship between two momentous figures, covering the personal (such as Staël’s son Auguste’s desire to visit the United States to “make a pilgrimage toward reason and freedom”) and the global (the War of 1812 is the pressing topic, and there is even an interlude where Jefferson details the state of South American geopolitics, replete with a map). Famously, in 1816, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Staël writes, “If one succeeds in destroying slavery in the South, at least one government in the world will be as perfect as human reason can possibly conceive.” Although this is generally understood by scholars to be a criticism of slavery in the southern states of the United States, due to ambiguity in translating the word “south” from the original French, other scholars have suggested that de Staël could be referring to colonization in South America.

Staël and the Adams family: The Adams family (including former American presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams and former First Lady Abigail Adams) was an important political family in the U.S during the 18th and early 20th century. Staël was a frequent topic of discussion amongst the Adams. John Quincy Adams, the 6th U.S president, in particular, recommended and sent many copies of Staël’s works to his father, John Adams; mother, Abigail Adams; and wife, Louisa Catherine Adams. In letters written between the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century, these members of the Adams family discussed Delphine, A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions, Upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations, and The Reflections Upon Peace.

Her Works

• Journal de Jeunesse, 1785

• Sophie ou les sentiments secrets, 1786 (published anonymously in 1790)

• Jane Gray, 1787 (published in 1790)

• Lettres sur le caractère et les écrits de J.-J. Rousseau, 1788

• Éloge de M. de Guibert

• À quels signes peut-on reconnaître quelle est l’opinion de la majorité de la nation?

• Réflexions sur le procès de la Reine, 1793

• Zulma : fragment d’un ouvrage, 1794

• Réflexions sur la paix adressées à M. Pitt et aux Français, 1795

• Réflexions sur la paix intérieure

• Recueil de morceaux détachés (comprenant : Épître au malheur ou Adèle et Édouard, Essai sur les fictions et trois nouvelles : Mirza ou lettre d’un voyageur, Adélaïde et Théodore et Histoire de Pauline), 1795

• Essai sur les fictions, translated by Goethe into German

• De l’influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations, 1796

• Des circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la Révolution et des principes qui doivent fonder la République en France

• De la littérature dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, 1799

• Delphine, 1802 deals with the question of a woman’s status in a society hidebound by convention and faced with a Revolutionary new order

• Vie privée de Mr. Necker, 1804

• Épîtres sur Naples

• Corinne ou l’Italie, 1807 is as much a travelogue as a fictional narrative. It discusses the problems of female artistic creativity in two radically different cultures, England and Italy.

• Agar dans le désert

• Geneviève de Brabant

• La Sunamite

• Le capitaine Kernadec ou sept années en un jour (comédie en deux actes et en prose)

• La signora Fantastici

• Le mannequin (comédie)

• Sapho

• De l’Allemagne, 1813, translated as Germany 1813.

• Réflexions sur le suicide, 1813

• Morgan et trois nouvelles, 1813

• An appeal to the nations of Europe against the continental system: published at Stockholm, by authority of Bernadotte, in March, 1813. By Madame de Staël Holstein.

• De l’esprit des traductions

• Considérations sur les principaux événements de la révolution française, depuis son origine jusques et compris le 8 juillet 1815, 1818 (posthumously)

• Dix Années d’Exil (1818), posthumously published in France by Mdm Necker de Saussure. In 1821 translated and published as Ten Years’ Exile. Memoirs of That Interesting Period of the Life of the Baroness De Stael-Holstein, Written by Herself, during the Years 1810, 1811, 1812, and 1813, and Now First Published from the Original Manuscript, by Her Son.

• Essais dramatiques, 1821

• Oeuvres complètes 17 t., 1820–21

• Oeuvres complètes de Madame la Baronne de Staël-Holstein [Complete works of Madame Baron de Staël-Holstein]. Paris: Firmin Didot frères. 1836. Volume 1  · Volume 2

Correspondence in French

• Lettres de Madame de Staël à Madame de Récamier, première édition intégrale, présentées et annotées par Emmanuel Beau de Loménie, éditions Domat, Paris, 1952.

• Lettres sur les écrits et le caractère de J.-J. Rousseau. – De l’influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations. – De l’éducation de l’âme par la vie./Réflexions sur le suicide. – Sous la direction de Florence Lotterie. Textes établis et présentés par Florence Lotterie. Annotation par Anne Amend Söchting, Anne Brousteau, Florence Lotterie, Laurence Vanoflen. 2008. ISBN 978-2745316424.

• Correspondance générale. Texte établi et présenté par Béatrice W. Jasinski et Othenin d’Haussonville. Slatkine (Réimpression), 2008–2009.

  1. Volume I. 1777–1791. ISBN 978-2051020817.

  2. Volume II. 1792–1794. ISBN 978-2051020824.

  3. Volume III. 1794–1796. ISBN 978-2051020831.

  4. Volume IV. 1796–1803. ISBN 978-2051020848.

  5. Volume V. 1803–1805. ISBN 978-2051020855.

  6. Volume VI. 1805–1809. ISBN 978-2051020862.

  7. Volume VII. date:15 May 1809–23 May 1812. ISBN 978-2051020879.

• Madame de Staël ou l’intelligence politique. Sa pensée, ses amis, ses amants, ses ennemis…, textes de présentation et de liaison de Michel Aubouin, Omnibus, 2017. ISBN 978-2258142671 commentaire biblio, Lettres de Mme de Staël, extraits de ses textes politiques et de ses romans, textes et extraits de lettres de Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Napoléon, Benjamin Constant. This edition contains extracts from her political writings and from letters addressed to her by Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Napoléon and Benjamin Constant.