Benjamin Constant

6 GERMAINE DE STAEL (1794–1800)

1. Charrière, Œuvres, IV, p. 562.


2. Charrière, Œuvres, IV, p. 559.


3. Staël, Correspondance générale, III/1, pp. 117–18, letter to Adolphe de Ribbing of
   18 September 1794.


4. Madame de Staël et l’Europe (Bibliothèque nationale catalogue of 1966 exhibition),
   Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1966, p. 36, item no. 146.


5. The most detailed and authoritative biography of Madame de Staël to date in French
   is Ghislain de Diesbach’s highly readable Madame de Staël, Paris: Librairie
   Académique Perrin, 1983, to which the reader is referred. In English Renée
   Winegarten’s Madame de Staël, Leamington Spa: Berg, 1985, provides a succinct
   and largely up-to-date survey of Madame de Staël’s life and work.


6. Madame de Staël had been visited at Juniper Hall by the English novelist Fanny
   Burney who was greatly impressed by ‘the ardour and warmth of her temper and
   partialities’ (quoted by Harold Nicolson, Benjamin Constant, London: Constable,
   1949, p. 109). On the Juniper Hall colony see Linda Kelly, Juniper Hall. An English
   Refuge from the French Revolution, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991.


7. Charrière, Œuvres, IV, pp. 562–4, letter to Constant of 13 September 1794, and the
   verse letter of 18 September 1794 pp. 564–6.


8. See Constant’s letter of 12 September 1794 and Isabelle’s letters to him of 13 and 20
   September, Charrière, Œuvres, IV, pp. 561–2, 562–4 and 566–7.


9. Charrière, Œuvres, IV, p. 573.


10. Charrière, Œuvres, IV, pp. 589–90.


11. Staël, Correspondance générale, III/1, p. 158.


12. Geneva, Bibliothèque publique et universitaire, MS Constant 16/1, letter dated
    ‘Neuchâtel, Wednesday evening’, i.e. 8 October 1794, unpublished.


13. Charrière, Œuvres, IV, p. 605, letter of 14 October 1794.


14. Charrière, Œuvres, IV, p. 620.


15. Charrière, Œuvres, IV, p. 654.


16. Charrière, Œuvres, IV, pp. 670–3, letter to Constant of 18 December 1794, and pp.
    677–8, letter to Isabelle de Charrière of 23 December 1794. On reactions to Kant on
    the part of Madame de Charrière, Constant and the Coppet Group, see B.Munteano,
    ‘Episodes kantiens en Suisse et en France’, Revue de littérature comparée15 (1935),
    pp. 387–459. On Madame de Charrière’s Trois femmes see Alix Deguise, Trois
    femmes: le monde de Madame de Charrière, Geneva: Slatkine, 1981.


17. Madame de Staël, Lettres à Ribbing, ed. Simone Balayé, Paris: Gallimard, 1960, p.
    268, letter of 3 March 1795: ‘[Constant] is a madman with a great deal of wit, and
    singularly ugly.’


18. Ghislain de Diesbach, op. cit., pp. 165–7.


19. Charrière, Œuvres, V, p. 89.


20. Cécile, ed. Paul Delbouille, p. 188.


21. Jean-Jacques Coulmann, Réminiscences,Paris: Michel Lévy, 1862 – 9 , vol. III, pp. 45

List of abbreviations 292