The influence of the salons of Paris on the thought and culture of the eighteenth century would be difficult to overstate. These meeting places for the vanguard of society were presided over by a succession of clever women, and the most brilliant of all of them was Madame de Stäel. Born Germaine Necker in Paris on April 22, 1766, her father was a powerful banker and her mother a Swiss pastor?s daughter who never got over her good fortune in marrying a rich man. In 1786 Germaine was married to a secretary in the Swedish embassy called de Stäel. Although she thought him ?a perfect gentleman,? she also found him dull and clumsy. She began to take lovers?the Vicomte de Narbonne and possibly Talleyrand?and then Benjamin Constant, in whom she at last met her intellectual equal. In 1806 her novel Delphine was published. It was an instant success and praised by Goethe and Byron, among others. Her salon thronged with glittering visitors, among them the tsar, Talleyrand, Madame Recalmier, Chateaubriand, Lafayette, and Wellington. Maria Fairweather gives an entrancing, illustrated account of this vanished world, so merciless to outsiders, but for those of the inner circle incomparably glamorous and exciting.

"'At Madame de Stael's this evening I meet the world,' wrote early American statesman Gouverneur Morris, and British biographer Fairweather's expansive biography of Germaine de Stal (1766 — 1817) rightly focuses on the salon as backdrop to French literary and political intrigues of the 18th and 19th centuries. The salons — where the great men of politics and culture gathered during and after the ancien rgime — were often a woman's only avenue of influence, and Mme. de Stal's gatherings included the most brilliant politicians, writers and artists of her day, including Chateaubriand, Talleyrand and Lafayette. Fairweather digs deep into de Stal's past to contextualize her rise from daughter of a self-made Swiss banker, a former finance minister to Louis XVI, and a Protestant governess whom he married, to author and hostess of one of Paris's leading salons. The result is a complicated portrait of a passionate woman well versed in Enlightenment philosophy, German literature and Calvinism, whose outspokenness pitted her against France's extreme factions — the royalists, the Jacobins — and eventually Napoleon, leading to her exile in Geneva. But this did not deter her from challenging France's leaders from afar or continuing her fruitful literary life. Fairweather (The Pilgrim Princess) offers an extensively researched history; however, only dedicated students of French culture and literature may have the fortitude to wade into this almost over-rich tome. Illus. not seen by PW. Agent, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson. (Feb.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

In this biography, Fairweather gives an entrancing account of the vanished world of the glittering 18th century Paris salon--so merciless to outsiders, but incomparably glamorous and exciting to the inner circle.