First published 1988
Germaine de Stael inherits her mother's influential literary salon in 1785 Paris at just nineteen, fresh from her marriage to Swedish ambassador Baron de Stael-Holstein. The daughter of finance minister Jacques Necker lives apart from her husband and takes a series of brilliant lovers, starting with Talleyrand, then war minister Narbonne, and finally Benjamin Constant in her most significant relationship. She publishes political essays including "A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations" while mounting fierce opposition to Napoleon's rise. Her salon becomes a center of intellectual resistance against tyranny and cynicism. Christopher Herold chronicles how this precocious woman navigates the dangerous currents of revolutionary France, using her wit, passion, and idealism as weapons against an increasingly authoritarian regime. Her story reveals the collision between personal desire and political conviction in an age when both could prove fatal.
Genres: biography, 20th-century, 19th-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, historical-fiction
Setting: Paris, France
Period: 1785, French Revolution
500 pages · Hardcover · Random House Value Publishing