Anne Lonise Germaine Necker De Stael-Holstein, baroness, a French authoress, born in Paris, April 22, 1766, died there, July 14, 1817. She was the only child of the finance minister Necker (originally of Geneva), whom she idolized, and whose fondness mitigated the excessive austerity which her mother brought to bear upon her education. She early displayed her literary genius and brilliant conversational power, which was much stimulated by her precocious discussions with the many learned friends of the family. She became especially interested in the celebrated Matthieu de Montmorency; but her mother arranged for her a conventional marriage with the Swedish ambassador, Baron de Stael-Ilolstein, which at the age of 20 made her the centre and, owing to her commanding presence and intellect, the oracle of a distinguished society. She hailed with delight the revolution of 1789, but deplored its excesses; and after devising a plan for the safety of the royal family, which was not acted upon, she saved Montmorency and other friends from the guillotine, though barely escaping herself.

After joining her parents at Coppet, she went to London, where she at once (1793) published an appeal in behalf of Marie Antoinette. Here she met Talleyrand, whom she afterward helped to return to France and to enter the ministry of foreign affairs. Under the directory 6ho was conspicuous in Paris as a leader of the constitutional party in conjunction with Benjamin Constant, and her influence was so great that Joseph Bonaparte offered to obtain for her 2,000,000 francs due to her father from the treasury, in the hope of overcoming her prejudices against his brother Napoleon; but she resisted, though she subsequently accepted the money from Louis XVIII. She was not permitted to remain in Paris, and took refuge with Mme. Recamier. When she returned to the more immediate vicinity of the capital, a work published by her father (1802) served as a pretext for her banishment 40 leagues from Paris, and she went to Germany. At Weimar she became acquainted with Goethe, Schiller, the brothers Schlegel, and others, and at Berlin with the royal family of Prussia. In the spring of 1804 she hastened home to attend her father in his last illness, but when she reached Coppet he was dead.

Broken-hearted and out of health, she sought relief in her memorable journey to Italy. In the summer of 1805 she returned to Switzerland in company with August Wilhelm von Schlegel, her mentor in regard to Germany, and the instructor of her children. She now alternately resided at Geneva and Coppet, her chateau in the latter place (now belonging to Baron Rothschild) being a resort of her friends, and especially for some time of Mme. Recamier. For a time she was tolerated in France, but having in 1807 removed to the vicinity of Paris to confer with her publishers about Corinne and secretly visited the capital, she was ordered back to Coppet. In 1810 she made an equally unsuccessful attempt to bring out her book on Germany, taking up her residence in the country house of her friend Montmorency. She was ruthlessly expelled, and although thousands of copies had been issued with the sanction of the censorship, the work was confiscated, no motive being assigned excepting that "it was not French," probably referring to its excessive appreciation of German thought.

On the birth of the emperor's son (1811) it was intimated to her that she might soften him by commemorating the occasion; she replied that she wished the child to receive the care of a competent nurse; and this and other remarks of hers becoming known to Napoleon, he actually converted her residence at Coppet into a prison. Schlegel was not permitted to remain; Mme. Recamier, Montmorency, and the duke de Broglie were not tolerated in Paris for having visited her; and she was forbidden to go beyond two miles from her house. Her position became intolerable, and as the seaports were closed to her, she could only escape, in the spring of 1812, by pretending to take a little walk from which she never returned. She went across the Swiss and Tyrolese mountains, and finally reached Vienna. As Napoleon's emissaries beset her even here, she made a tedious journey through Galicia and the duchy of Warsaw to Moscow, and thence to St. Petersburg, where the imperial family received her with open arms; but she vindicated her patriotism at a banquet, when on a toast being proposed for the victory of Russia over France, she exclaimed: "Not over France, only over her oppressor." During her visit at Stockholm her youngest son Albert fell in a duel (1813), shortly before her departure for London, where she attended to the publication of her work on Germany. She returned to Paris on the fall of Napoleon in 1814, but left it on his return from Elba. In 1816 she made an unsuccessful attempt to restore her health by another journey to Italy. Schlegel was with her to the last, and Chateaubriand first met Mme. Recamier at the deathbed of Mme. de Stael. Her remains were removed to the family vault at Coppet. - Of her three children by her first husband (from whom she was separated for several years, though she rejoined him in his last illness, and who died on May 9, 1802), Auguste (author of Let-tres sur l' Angleterre, 1826, and other writings) survived her till Nov. 11, 1827, and Albertine, wife of the duke Achille de Broglie, till September, 1838. She had one child by her second husband, Albert Jean de Rocca, a French officer and military writer, who died in January, 1818, in his 31st year.

It seems that on meeting him at Geneva, whither he had retired after being severely wounded in the peninsular war, she became interested in him, and in 1811 she married him secretly, in order, as she said in her will, which first disclosed the fact, to retain the name identified with her fame. - Mme. de Stael's versatility was remarkable. She excelled in every branch of prose composition, as a linguist, in a measure as a vocalist and dramatist, and in private theatricals; and she was especially celebrated for bold and suggestive generalizations, a masculine grasp of thought, an irrepressible flow of ideas and language, and for a love of humanity and constitutional liberty after the model of England. Her best known works are : Delphine, a novel in which she idealizes herself (4 vols., Geneva, 1802); Coriime, ou l'ltalie (3 vols., Paris, 1807); and De l'Allemagne (3 vols., London, 1813), which first fully revealed to the French the achievements of modern German literature. These works have passed through many editions and translations, as well as most of her other writings, which include Lcttres sur les ecrits et le caractere de J. J. Rousseau (1788); Reflexions sur la paix (1794); De Vinfluence des passions sur le oonheur des indi-vidus et des nations (1796); De la litterature consideree dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800); Considerations sur les princi-paux emblements de la revolution franraise (3 vols., 1818; new ed., 2 vols., 1861); and Dix annees d'exil (1821; new ed., 1861). Her complete works were edited by her son Auguste (17 vols., 1820-'21), with a notice by Mme. Neckor de Saussure; and her daughter threw additional light upon her mother's life in her notes accompanying an edition of her brother's Oeuvres diverses (5 vols., 1828-'9). Mme. de Stael's correspondence with the grand duchess Louisa of Saxe-Weimar from 1800 to 1817 appeared in London in 1862, and other letters of hers were published by Saint-Rene Taillan-dier (1863). - See Sainte-Beuve's Portraits de femmes (1844), Baudrillart's Eloge de Mme. de Stael (1850), and "Life and Times of Mme, do Stael," by Norris (London, 1853).