Two centuries of sexism have hidden Staël's place in international history. Straddling the divides of the French Revolution, Napoleonic Europe, emergent nationalism, and European Romanticism, and playing pivotal roles in those movements, she was also a friend of Byron, Jefferson, and Tsar Alexander. Extensive archival research, and a complete contextual overview of Staël's writings, here restore Staël's canonical status as political philosopher, historian, European Romantic theorist, and Revolutionary. While the term stateswoman is not commonly used, it describes Staël aptly, acting as she necessarily did through men around her. The brilliant game of masks and proxies imposed on her by patriarchy is detailed here, alongside her unending fight for the oppressed, from the nations of Napoleon's subjugated Europe to the victims of the Atlantic slave trade. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

It was through Stael's best-seller De l'Allemagne that the term 'Romanticism', coined in Germany, reached Europe and America. Around this term, Stael built a new and universal agenda: her manifesto offered Napoleon's Europe an alternative to everything he stood for. The new universe she revealed helped to bury the neo-Classical world and to shape the nineteenth century. In this important work, Dr Isbell reasserts Stael's place in history and analyses her vast agenda, which covers every Classical and Romantic divide in art, philosophy, religion, and society from 1789 to 1815. This investigation sheds light upon the two different revolutions that created modern Europe, seen here by a leader of both.

It was through Stael's best-seller De l'Allemagne that the term 'Romanticism', coined in Germany, reached Europe and America. Around this term, Stael built a new and universal agenda: her manifesto offered Napoleon's Europe an alternative to everything he stood for. The new universe she revealed helped to bury the neo-Classical world and to shape the nineteenth century. In this important work, Dr Isbell reasserts Stael's place in history and analyses her vast agenda, which covers every Classical and Romantic divide in art, philosophy, religion, and society from 1789 to 1815. This investigation sheds light upon the two different revolutions that created modern Europe, seen here by a leader of both.