Lucy Moore

Front Row at the Revolution

Germaine de Staël: A Political Portrait

By

Princeton University Press 296pp £24.95 order from our bookshop

I can think of no other period that rivals the French Revolution and its aftermath for sheer historical thrills. It was a time in which hope was mingled with despair and ambition with brutality – when what you thought or simply who you were could mean the difference between life and death. Germaine de Staël was one of the very few women who could be described not just as occupying a front-row seat at this drama but having a starring role in it. She was brought up at court as the only child of Jacques Necker, finance minister to Louis XVI. Celebrated for her sparkling intelligence, she published her first work under her own name in 1788 at the age of twenty-two, two years after her marriage to the Swedish ambassador to the French court, a nondescript man largely chosen as a husband because he would allow her to shine.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • RT : A magnificent demolition job on this "acid laced tirade...unpleasantly self-obsessed...self pitying polemic...book… ,
    • 'Seventy years on, the time we have left to gather such first-hand testimony is running out.' John Keay on the sig… ,
    • The author 'seethes with contemptuous indignation at the shiny junk that an unregulated construction industry dumps… ,
    • 'The physical courage he demonstrated as a young man [...] gave way to intellectual power; radical thought, gifted… ,
    • 'While Jane Austen didn’t perhaps achieve the full recognition that she deserved in her lifetime, even then she out… ,
    • 'All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And t… ,
    • 'You are interested in a particular subject; basic research hardens this interest into an obsession, after which th… ,
    Follow Us