A tempest in petticoats; French letters.(Madame de Stael)(Book Review) From: The Economist (US) | Date: March 19, 2005 | COPYRIGHT 2005 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Pretty ugly

JUST reading about the life of Germaine Necker, or Madame de Stael as she later became, is an exhausting business. She talked, wrote novels, plays and political treatises, travelled widely and had affairs enough for two or three lifetimes. Her social life often sounds like what might happen if a whole shelf of Penguin Classics grew arms and legs and held a cocktail party: Goethe and Schiller were invited in Germany, Byron and Coleridge in England. But she was...