Le Château de Coppet, Madame de Staël’s residence on the shores of Lake Geneva (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Madame de Staël, the daughter of Swiss-born Jacques Necker (30 September 1732 – 9 April 1804), Louis XVI’s Finance Minister, is a legendary figure. For one thing, Napoleon I was so afraid of her that he would not let her live in or near Paris. She was born in Paris, but, in 1784, her father had bought a lovely home in Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva. When Germaine de Staël was exiled from France, by Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I, she took refuge at Coppet.

Germaine de Staël

French-Swiss Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817; aged 51), may well be the most prominent intellectual, and salonnière (salonist) of her era, an era that spans the French Revolution, Napoleon’s Empire (Napoléon I)…