ABSTRACT
Germaine de Staël's entire oeuvre is dominated by the impact of the revolutionary experience. Her history of the French Revolution of 1789 (the unfinished work Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française [Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution] published posthumously in 1818) combines two different approaches: a broad historical reconstruction, and a set of personal recollections and anecdotes. The first dimension reflects the author's moderate political views and liberal sentiments; it condemns the excesses of the Revolution while defending its fundamental principles of equality of rights and constitutional government. The second dimension conveys most vividly the experience of loss: the frustration of political defeat, the fears and sufferings of persecution by a despotic regime, and the pains of exile of the deprivation of loved ones and of life in one own's country.
