Madame De Staël

`Look at her, she is the image of our beautiful Italy.' Corinne, or Italy (1807) is both the story of a love affair between Oswald, Lord Nelvil and a beautiful poetess, and an homage to the landscape, literature and art of Italy. On arriving in Italy, Oswald immediately falls under Corinne's magical spell as she is crowned a national genius at the Captitol. Yet, on returning to England, he succumbs to convention and honours his late father's wish by marrying the dutiful English girl, Lucile, despite having learned that Corinne is Lucile's Italian half-sister. Corinne dies of a broken heart and Lord Nelvil is left with a seared conscience. Staël weaves discreet French Revolutionary political allusion and allegory into her romance, and its publication saw her order of exile renewed by Napoleon. Indeed, the novel stands as the birth of modern nationalism, and introduces to French usage the word `nationalitié'. It is also one of the first works to put a woman's creativity centre stage. Sylvia Raphael's new translation preserves the natural character of the French original and the edition is complemented by notes and and introduction which serve to set an extraordinary work of European Romanticism in its historical and political contexts. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Madame Germaine de Stael is often regarded as the "mistress to an age", or (like England and Russia) one of the three great European "powers" of the 19th century. She was in some sense both, but she was also an important and influential writer whose works, astonishingly, have not, until this volume, been translated into English since the early 19th century. She absorbed the leading ideas of the Enlightenment on literature, politics, science and the social order; turned many of them to her own uses and then bequeathed them to the 19th century, which adopted much of the Enlightenment through her works. She had two related aims: by her writings on politics, to guide Europe as it entered the republican era and to help it maintain its cultural legacy and liberty; and to explain all literature by its relation to social institutions (which has had a profound effect on all subsequent studies of comparative literature). Here, in clear and flowing English prose that conveys both the personality and the style of the original - and that corrects the errors of earlier translations - are selections from Madame Germaine de Stael's major works, including "Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution", "Literature Considered in its Relation to Social Institutions", "Essay on Fiction", "On Germany" and her reflections on Russian and English as well as German national character. They make plain both her amazing modern approach to such subjects as politics, literature, science, education and women, and the tremendous repercussions her work has had.