Ten Years of Exile

This unabridged English translation of "Dix Annees d'Exile" is the powerful memoir of Germaine de Stael's tumultuous years as the most prominent politically active woman in Napoleonic Europe. Translated by an award-winning scholar, it is a strong-minded and passionate woman's personal and political journal, published to mark the bicentennary of Napoleon's rise to power. During the French Revolution, Mme de Stael's salon became a brilliant centre of political and intellectual life. She aided Napoleon's introduction to French society, yet Stael and other liberals in the Constitutional Club she helped found came to oppose the increasingly powerful general. He, in turn, banished her from Paris in 1803. In exile, Stael continued to agitate against the new master of France. When Napoleon began his great Russian campaign, she fled across Austria and Poland to avoid the advancing armies. She arrived in Moscow only weeks ahead of Napoleon and then barely escaped to England. After Napoleon's defeat, Stael returned to Paris and again received ministers, generals and sovereigns in her revived salon. As the author of beloved novels and internationally respected work on literature, history and politics, Stael knew and corresponded with intellectuals and politicians, including Talleyrand, Schiller, and Goethe. Her memoir provides penetrating insights into the society and culture of Napoleonic Europe and vivid portraits of the leading figures of the age, including the emperor himself. Based upon the definitive 1996 French text edited by Simone Balaye and Mariella Bonifacio, this English edition includes a new introduction by Simone Balaye and Avriel Goldberger. Supplemented with a complete chronology and map of Stael's dramatic flight across Europe, "Ten Years of Exile" should appeal to those interested in biography, French history, women's studies, political and intellectual history, literature, and the Age of Napoleon.