An accomplished biographer of figures ranging from Talleyrand to Cardinal Newman, Charlotte Blennerhassett (1843–1917) originally published this three-volume study in German. Reissued here is the English translation of 1889 by J. E. Gordon Cumming. Madame de Staël (1766–1817), an intellectual in Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century, was ranked by Auguste Comte as among the 'great men' of the era. A novelist, salonnière, literary and social critic, and follower of Rousseau, she became keenly involved in the opposition to Louis XVI. Volume 1 of Blennerhassett's authoritative study addresses Madame de Staël's life up to the Revolution, examining her ancestry, family and marriage to the Swedish ambassador to France. The volume also covers her views on marriage, slavery, the Rights of Man and the contemporary political turmoil.