AGOULT, MARIE CATHERINE SOPHIE DE FLA VIGNY, COMTESSE (1805-1876), French author, whose nom de plume was "Daniel Stern," was born at Frankfurt-on Main on Dec. 31, 1805. Her father was a French officer who had served in the army of the emigrant princes, and her mother was the daughter of a Frankfurt banker. She was married in 1827 to the Comte Charles d'Agoult. In Paris she gathered round her a brilliant society which included Alfred de Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Ingres, Chopin; Meyerbeer, Heine and others. She was separated from her husband, and became the mistress of Franz Liszt. During her frequent travels in Switzerland, France and Italy she made the acquaintance of George Sand, and figures in the Lettres d'un voyageur as "Arabella." By Liszt she had three children—a son who died young; Blandine, who married Emile 011ivier; and Cosima, who married first Hans von Billow and later Richard Wagner. The story of her breach with Liszt is told under a very slight disguise in her novel Nelida (1845) . On her return to Paris in 1841 she began to write for the Presse, and later for the Revue des deux Mondes and the Revue independante. Mme. d'Agoult was an ardent apostle of the ideas of '48, and from this date her salon, which had been literary and artistic, took on a more political tone ; revolutionists of various nationalities were wel comed by her, and she had an especial friendship and sympathy for Daniele Manin. In 1857 she produced a national drama, Jeanne Darc, which was translated into Italian and presented with success at Turin. The most impqrtant section of Daniel Stern's work is her political and historical essays : Lettres repub licaines (1848) , Esquisses morales et politiques (1849) , Histoire de la Revolution de 1848 (1850-1853), Histoire des commence ments de la Republique aux Pays-Bas (1872). Mme. d'Agoult died in Paris March 5, 1876.
See Mme. d'Agoult, Mes Souvenirs (1806-33), 1877; J. Mazzini, Lettres de Joseph Mazzini a Daniel Stern (1872) ; A. Pommier, Madame la comtesse d'Agoult (Daniel Stern), 1876; A. Cuvillier Fleury, Portraits revolutionnaires, vol. i. (1889) ; A. Ungherini, "Daniel Stern" in the Revista repubblicana (188o, No. 9) ; S. Roche blave, Une Amitie romanesque, George Sand et Madame d'Agoult (1895) ; R. Bory, Une Retraite romantique en Suisse; Liszt et la comtesse d'Agoult (1923) , with an appendix containing letters; Daniel Oliver, Memoires de la comtesse d'Agoult; 1833-54 (1926) .