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Germaine de Sta‰l (17661817) is perhaps best known today as a novelist, literary critic, and outspoken and independent thinker. Yet she was also a prominent figure in politics during the French Revolution. Biancamaria Fontana sheds new light on this often overlooked aspect of Sta‰l´s life and work, bringing vividly to life her unique experience as a political actor in a world where women had no place. Sta‰l was an exceptionally talented woman who achieved a degree of public influence to which not even her wealth and privilege would normally have entitled her. During the Revolution, when the lives of so many around her were destroyed, she succeeded in carving out a unique path for herself and making her views heard, first by the powerful men around her, later by the European public at large. Fontana shows how Sta‰l´s ideas were shaped by the remarkable times in which she lived, and argues that it is only through a consideration of her political insights that we can fully understand Sta‰l´s legacy and its enduring relevance for us today.

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"An important and original book about a prominent female intellectual who took the measure of the French Revolution in both theoretical and practical terms. Fontana argues convincingly that Sta‰l´s political ideas have been overlooked or underrated in previous treatments of her life and work."--Ruth Scurr, author of Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

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Biancamaria Fontana is professor of the history of political ideas at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Her books include Montaigne´s Politics (Princeton), Benjamin Constant and the Post-Revolutionary Mind, and Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society.

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