Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), 1843. French writer, novelist and political propagandist born in Paris, was the only child of Jacques Necker, French statesman and financier. Married unhappily in 1786 to the Swedish ambassador to France, she had many affairs, including a liaison with the author and political philosopher Benjamin Constant. From 1792 she spent a number of periods of exile at Coppet, her estate by Lake Geneva. From Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay, 1778-1840 by Fanny Burney, Madame D'Arblay. (London, 1843).