STAEL, GERMAINE DE

born April 22, 1766, Paris, Fr. died July 14, 1817, Paris in full Anne-louise-germaine Necker, Baronne (baroness) De Stal-holstein, byname Madame De Stal French-Swiss woman of letters, political propagandist, and conversationalist, who epitomized the European culture of her time, bridging the history of ideas from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. She also gained fame by maintaining a salon for leading intellectuals. Her writings include novels, plays, moral and political essays, literary criticism, history, autobiographical memoirs, and even a number of poems. Her most important literary contribution was as a theorist of Romanticism. Additional reading J. Christopher Herold, Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Stal (1958, reissued 1981), is an excellent English-language introduction to Stalian studies. Renee Winegarten, Mme. de Stal (1985), places the writer in her historical context and assesses her works. Madelyn Gutwirth, Madame de Stal, Novelist: The Emergence of the Artist as Woman (1978), thoughtfully and lucidly examines the impact of the writer's femaleness on her works as well as on her critics. Charlotte Hogsett, The Literary Existence of Germaine de Stal (1987), traces the development of her style.