STAEL, MADAME DE. ANNE LOUISE GERMAINE NECKER, BARONNE DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN (1766-1817), French novelist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Paris on April 22, 1766. Her father was the famous financier Necker, her mother Suzanne Curchod, almost equally famous as the early love of Gibbon, as the wife of Necker himself, and as the mistress of one of the most popular salons of Paris. The future Mme. de Stael was from her earliest years a romp, a coquette and passionately desirous of prominence and attention. She was a plain child and a plainer woman, whose sole attractions were large eyes and a buxom figure. She is said to have written her father a letter on his famous Compte-Rendu and other matters when she was not fif teen, and to have injured her health by excessive study and intellectual excitement. There is no doubt that her father's dis missal, and the consequent removal of the family from the busy life of Paris, were beneficial to her. During part of the next few years they resided at Coppet, her father's estate on the Lake of Geneva, which she herself made famous. They returned to Paris, or at least to its neighbourhood, in 1785, and Mlle. Necker re sumed literary work of a miscellaneous kind, including a novel, Sophie, printed in 1786, and a tragedy, Jeanne Grey, published in 179o. She married Eric Magnus, Baron of Stael-Holstein, who was first an attache of the Swedish legation, and then minister. For a great heiress and a very ambitious girl the marriage scarcely seemed brilliant, but the king of Sweden promised the ambassa dorship for twelve years and a pension in case of its withdrawal, and the marriage took place on Jan. 14, 1786. The husband was thirty-seven, the wife twenty. Mme. de Stael was accused of extravagance, and after II years (1797) an amicable separation of goods was arranged. There was no scandal between them ; the baron obtained money and the lady obtained, as a guaranteed ambassadress of a foreign power of consideration, an established position. In 1788 she appeared as an author under her own name (Sophie had been already published, but anonymously) with some Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau. She stood at this time for a mixture of Rousseauism and constitutionalism in politics. She visited
Coppet once or twice, but for the most part in the early days of the revolutionary period she was in Paris taking an interest and, as she thought, a part in the councils and efforts of the Moderates. At last, the day before the September massacres, she fled from France, befriended at this critical juncture by Manuel and Tallien.
She betook herself to Coppet, and there gathered round her a considerable number of friends and fellow-refugees. In 1793 she visited England, and established herself at Mickleham in Surrey as the centre of the Moderate Liberal emigrants—Talleyrand, Narbonne, Jaucourt and others. In the summer she returned to Coppet and wrote a pamphlet (Reflexions sur le proces de la reine) on the queen's execution. The next year her mother died, and the fall of Robespierre opened the way back to Paris. M. de Stael (whose mission had been in abeyance and himself in Holland for three years) was accredited to the French republic by the regent of Sweden ; his wife reopened her salon and for a time was con spicuous in the motley and eccentric society of the Directory. She also published several small works, the chief being an essay De l'Influence des passions (1796), and another De la Litterature consideree dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800). It was during these years that Mme. de Stael was of chief political importance. Benjamin Constant, whom she first met at Coppet in 1794, had a very great influence over her, as in return she had over him. Both personal and political reasons threw her into opposition to Bonaparte. Her own preference for a moderate re public or a constitutional monarchy was quite sincere, and, even if it had not been so, her own character and Napoleon's were too much alike in some points to admit of their getting on together. For some years, however, she was able to alternate between Coppet and Paris without difficulty, though not without knowing that the First Consul disliked her. In 1797 she, as above mentioned, separated formally from her husband. In 1799 he was recalled by the king of Sweden, and in 1802 he died, duly attended by her. They had three children : Auguste-Louis, Albert and Albertine, who married Victor, duc de Broglie.