Germaine de Staël

Born in 1766 to Jacques Necker, France's finance minister, and salonist Suzanne Curchod, she grew up at the center of intellectual Paris and Geneva. She was present for the Estates General of 1789 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, holding a moderate line through the Revolution's violence. The Reign of Terror drove her out the first time; Napoleon, whom she'd identified as a tyrant early, made it personal and exiled her again. From exile she built the Coppet group, a sprawling European intellectual circle with herself at its heart. Her novels and essays championed individuality, passion, and the Romantic movement, lending it legitimacy across the continent. She wrote about public expression as both necessary and dangerous, and lived that tension until her death in 1817.