Why did I write a novel about Germaine de Stael instead of a traditional biography?
After agonizing for sometime as to which literary form would best achieve my objectives, I chose fiction as my vehicle. I wanted to reach as broad an audience as possible with the truth, neglected by historians, of how the Baroness Germaine de Staël, a brilliant, audacious woman helped alter the course of history. She should not be denied her due place in the annals of the great and the celebrated.
A definitive biography has already been written about her by J. Christopher Herold. Staëlienne scholars and the literati have done justice to her philosophy and her literary accomplishments. To their credit, they continue to sustain her distinction as a cerebral human being.
With fiction, I was able to avoid intrusive detail and take liberties to clarify and dramatize. I concentrated on story lines that stir interest and curiosity...her confrontation with Napoleon and her peripatetic personal life.
Though she deplored the limitations placed on women during the period in which she lived the Baroness de Stael worked within the system...by supporting men of power and influence. And she achieved her goals.
I chose to portray Germaine de Staël as the vivacious, courageous, flesh and blood woman, which she was, with faults and flaws... which she had. The techniques of fiction gave me the freedom to create scenes from a single sentence, a paragraph, a bit of dialogue, a quote from a letter, a passing comment by an admirer or an enemyand even a diatribe by Napoleon.
