Madame De Stal

French writer, an essayist and great supporter of the French revolution. She occupied herself with politics for her whole life and had a varying fortune, up and down. The only child of an illustrious Calvinist family, Germaine was the daughter of Jacques Necker, a famed financier and minister of finance. A bright and literate young woman, she hoped to "link her fate with a great man." Instead, she married Baron de Stael, an unremarkable Swedish ambassador to France. They had two children to survive, even though her biographer makes it clear that the father of the children was not her husband. From the beginning of her marriage, Germaine pursued an independent intellectual and sensual lifestyle, both a literary career and various liaisons with distinguished men. Her most significant and lasting affair was with the brilliant politician and writer Benjamin Constant. After her husband's death, she secretly married a man of 24 and had her last child at age 44. A vivid, if not overpowering personality, she was a charming and engaging conversationalist whose theories were well ahead of her time. Her novels were noted, "Delphine" and "Corinne." Germaine de Stael was also a pushy, overpowering and at times bombastic personality. She died 7/14/1817, Paris. Link to Wikipedia biography