The French-Swiss woman of letters and novelist Germaine de Staël [full name Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne de Staël-Holstein, historically referred to as Madame de Staël] (1766-1817) greatly influenced European thought and literature with her enthusiasm for German romanticism.

Germaine de Staël was born Anne Louise Germaine Necker in Paris on April 22, 1766. Her father was Jacques Necker, a man of modest origins, who had risen to become Louis XVI's finance minister. Her mother Suzanne, though stiff and cold, entertained the leading intellectuals and politicians of the day in her famous salon. Staël's natural genius was thus nurtured from her infancy. The child adored her father--to the point of deploring that she was born too late to marry him--and he adored and pampered her. Madame Necker was intensely jealous of their mutual adoration; she and Staël bitterly...