Anne-Louise Germaine Necker (Paris, April 22, 1766 - Ib., July 14, 1817), Baroness of Staël Holstein, known as Madame de Staël [stal], was a French writer, philosopher, and tertulian of Genevan origin. He stood out for his political ideas and his essays: both his sentimental novels of feminist and pre-Romantic air (Delphine and Corinne) and his two extensive works of cultural criticism and comparatist (De la littérature and De l'Allemagne) achieved rapid dissemination in Europe. He believed in a feminine intelligence as powerful as the masculine and endowed with a superior sensibility, demanded that women be educated just like men and that the husband-wife relationship should develop on an equal footing and detest conventions.