Staël, Germaine De

In full  Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baronne (baroness) de Staël-Holstein , byname  Madame de Staël  French-Swiss woman of letters, political propagandist, and conversationalist, who epitomized the European culture of her time, bridging the history of ideas from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. She also gained fame by maintaining a salon for leading intellectuals. Her writings include novels, plays, moral and political essays, literary