Travels With Madame De Stael

Born in 1766 and brought up in the hot house atmosphere of an Enlightenment Parisian salon Germaine de Staël was the first woman celebrity of the modern era an unusually gifted intellect and writer who tried to influence European history on the side of liberty and live her own life according to her feelings. She wrote of herself: 'The liveliness of my affections and opinions has led me into dangerous waters from which no-one but me could extricate myself'. Indeed she was exiled from Paris by Napoleon when she spoke out against his crude despotism and during her travels around Europe wrote On Literature and On Germany in which she pulled Europe together intellectually after the French revolution - and defined a whole new era Romanticism. In this lively book Kobak writes in the spirit of de Staël's wish to pass on the secrets of survival to other generations particularly to women and in the spirit of her later gloss: 'These ambitious essays won't give any remedies for the soul's suffering; but they will honour life'.>