Germaine de Staël

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Standard Name: Staël, Germaine de
Birth Name: Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker
Married Name: Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël
Used Form: Germaine de Stael
GS is remembered primarily for her political activism and the salons she established following the French Revolution; history, politics, and culture were certainly among her frequent literary subjects. The same interests inform her highly successful and influential novels, some short stories and, less significantly, plays. Other writings include literary criticism and personal letters.
Winegarten, Renee. Mme de Staël. Berg.
81
Her anglophilia and her attention to English literature and culture gave her particular importance for British women writers.
Photograph of the painting of Germaine de Staël by Baron Gérard. Godefroid, 1810. She stands leaning against a stone table. She is wearing a red high-waisted dress with short puff sleeves and a small cameo brooch pinned in the centre of the bust, a black shawl folded over her arm, and a striking red and white turban on her curly hair. She holds a small sprig of green in one hand.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Occupation William Godwin
The imprint M. J. Godwin and Company was launched the following year. The business flourished, becoming almost a literary salon like that of Joseph Johnson : visitors included Germaine de Staël . It remained, however...
Occupation Henri-Frédéric Amiel
He became a philosopher and a professor of aesthetics, and published a number of books including a study of Germaine de Staël . His best known work, however, was his diary. It exerted an influence...
Material Conditions of Writing Harriet Beecher Stowe
HBS used her earlier travels in Europe as material for a travel guide for Americans. She had met Germaine de Staël and Elizabeth Gaskell while in Europe, and had voraciously read everything by George Sand
Material Conditions of Writing Isabel Hill
Her need for money having induced IH to accept Richard Bentley 's offer to translate Germaine de Staël 's Corinne into English for his series Bentley's Standard Novels, her version appeared in print.
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
Hill, Benson Earle. “Memoir of the Late Isabel Hill”. The Monthly Magazine, Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper.
185-6
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Literary Setting Caroline Scott
Like CS 's previous novel, this combines satire with moralised sensibility. The heroine, Theresa, is, according to the Athenæum reviewer, one of the thousand imitations or caricatures of [de Staël 's] Corinne, though...
Literary responses Hannah More
Next year saw a rich crop of reviews. Sydney Smith in the Edinburgh Review, while praising HM 's style and her skill at manipulating her readers, damned the novel as over-moralized, strained and unnatural...
Literary responses Felicia Hemans
Chorley also wrote the note on FH in The Authors of England: A Series of Medallion Portraits, 1838, claiming for her a place of honour
Chorley, Henry Fothergill, and Achille Collas. The Authors of England. Charles Tilt.
1
among those treated there, strongly praising The Forest...
Literary responses Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
Two Belgian ministers of state wrote to express their appreciation.
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan,. Lady Morgan’s Memoirs. Editors Dixon, William Hepworth and Geraldine Jewsbury, AMS Press.
2: 391-2
Maria Edgeworth delighted even in the improbabilities of this book, and called its heroine wonderfully clever and preposterous—a Belgian Corinne.
Campbell, Mary. Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson. Pandora.
222
The parallel...
Literary responses Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
De Staël is said to have had France read to her on her deathbed, with approbation.
Campbell, Mary. Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson. Pandora.
149
Her lover Benjamin Constant defended Morgan from attack, and Morgan's own friend Lady Charleville , who had previously...
Literary responses Willa Cather
A review by Randolph Bourne in the USA levelled much the same criticisms as William Heinemann in England.
Cather, Willa. On Writing. Editor Tennant, Stephen, Alfred A. Knopf.
96
H. L. Mencken , however, thought this book still more competent, more searching and convincing, better...
Literary responses Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier felt that this novel, together with LMC 's lives of Manon Roland and Germaine de Staël (first volume in The Ladies' Family Library) showed that polemical writing had not harmed her...
Literary responses Harriet Martineau
The Athenæum compared this novel favourably to the work of Jane Austen , saying that HM outstripped her predecessor in creating characters of a higher order of mental force and spiritual attainment, and offering to...
Literary responses George Sand
The novel met with high praise from Balzac , and a critic at the Revue des Deux Mondes thought it better than anything by Germaine de Staël . These two knew the author's gender, but...
Literary responses George Sand
Ellen Moers , in her ground-breaking Literary Women, 1976, read Consuelo as a key step in the tradition of women writers presenting heroinism through the figure of the woman artist, especially the opera singer...
Leisure and Society Hannah More
Once an omnivorous reader, HM restricted her choice of books in later life, in line with her religious convictions. She delighted in William Cowper as a poet whom I can read on Sunday.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press.
90
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