Staël-Holstein

ANNE LOUISE GERMAINE NECKER, BARONNE DE, (stahl-hol's tin,) a distinguished French authore , B. in Paris, 1766, was the only child ofM. Necker (q. v.), the celebrated minister of finance. She early evinced an intelligence and literary taste beyond her years, and which doubtle received fostering from her a ociation with Raynal, Marm on tel, and other eminent authors who were her father's frequent guests. In 1786 she married a Swedish diplomatist, the Baron de Staël, and in 1788 produced her first literary effort: Letters on the Writings and Character of J. J. Rou eau. In 1793 she took up her residence in England, along with other emigrés; returning to France two years afterward to become an influential member of a political clique whose chief was Benjamin Constant, and as such an object of bitter antipathy to Bonaparte, then First Consul, who, in 1802, banished her from Paris. In the same year she published Delphine, her first novel, and visited Germany, in which country she formed the acquaintance of Göthe, Schiller, and A. W. Schlegel. In 1807 her Corinne appeared, to establish her literary reputation, and excite anew the hostility of Napoleon I. towards its author. She then took up her residence at Coppet, in Switzerland, where she became the central figure in a society which included Constant, Schlegel, Sismondi, and other notable persons. In 1810 she brought outDe l'Allemagne, her most ambitious performance; and after the fall of Napoleon again returned to Paris, in which city she D. in 1817. [s. 850]