Madame de Stael on Slate.com
October 06, 2008
Renowned biographer Stacy Schiff reviews Madame de Stael: The First Modern Woman, by Francine du Plessix Gray, on Slate.com.
"Gray excels at the short form, not exactly made for Madame de Stael. That Gray is able to rein her in is a marvel; that she has compressed her exuberance and corpulence to 256 pages a miracle. Then there are the convoluted politics of the time: At one point Gray neatly extracts de Stael's major ideas, freely admitting her subject's ineptitudes and inconsistencies without bludgeoning her with either. She lets this eminently quotable woman speak for herself, administering a full dose of her intoxicating conversation."
Click here for the full review.