1-624-438 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Germaine de Stael, French writer, novelist and political propagandist, (1843). Born in Paris, Germaine de Stael (1766-1817) was the only child of Jacques Necker, French statesman and financier. Married unhappily in 1786 to the Swedish ambassador to France, she had many affairs, including a liaison with the author and political philosopher Benjamin Constant. From 1792 she spent a number of periods of exile at Coppet, her estate by Lake Geneva.