MADAME DE STAAL — MÉMOIRES tome 1,2,3 and 4

Londres 1755, 321/ 298/ 284/ 247pp., not ill., small half-leather bindings, backs sl. used, From humble extraction, more or less accidentally landed in the highest circles of French aristocracy, more or less accidentally implicated in the 1718 Cellamare conspiracy, more or less accidentally arrested and kept in the Bastille, it shall not be by accident that in her memoirs she appears as no more than a distant spectator to her own life. A pre-modern “étrangère”, long before Camus’ L’étranger. Mme. De Graffigny read the memoirs with “un plaisir inexprimable”. “C’est ce que je connois de mieux ecrit, de plus interessant, de plus gay, de plus touchant. C’est un chef-d’oeuvre.” The two splendid comedies that follow the memoirs could only add to Mme. De Staal’s literary reputation, which, however, almost eclipsed behind the veneration for the generally recognized male deities of the French Enlightenment. (code N-37)