Reading Order
Ten Years ExileTen Years of Exile Reading Order
Dix années d'exil (Ten Years of Exile, published 1821, posthumously) by Germaine de Staël is the memoir of de Staël's long exile from France under Napoleon — the most immediate and politically charged of her works, written partly during the exile itself and partly in retrospect, describing her flight from Napoleon's police in 1812, her journey through Russia just before Napoleon's invasion, and her eventual arrival in England. De Staël died in 1817, before she could complete the work, and it was published posthumously by her son. The surviving portions of Ten Years of Exile cover the period from 1800 to 1812 and include some of de Staël's most vivid prose: the description of her salon at Coppet and the European intellectuals who gathered there, the account of her flight from French agents, the extraordinary portrait of Russia in 1812 (she arrived in Moscow days before Napoleon's forces), and the description of London in 1813. As a document of the Napoleonic period seen from the perspective of its most distinguished political exile, Ten Years of Exile is also one of the most important historical memoirs of the early nineteenth century.
Where to start
Dix années d'exil (1821) — the posthumously published memoir exists in a complete French edition and in a recent English translation by Doris Beik. The work is moderate length (about 300 pages) and more accessible than De l'Allemagne or the complete Corinne. Read after Corinne and Delphine to understand the biographical context of de Staël's fiction; read alongside the Mémoires d'outre-tombe by Chateaubriand to see two different Romantic memorialists responding to the same Napoleonic period.
Complete Ten Years Exile Book List
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Dix années d'exil
Germaine de Staël·1821·Written partly during the exile (1810–1812) and partly after de Staël's return to France (1814–1817); left incomplete at her death in 1817; published by her son Auguste de Staël in 1821. The 1812 section, describing her flight through Russia on the eve of Napoleon's invasion, was written with exceptional speed and immediacy during the flight itself.
Ten Years Exile — Frequently Asked Questions
Was Germaine de Staël in Russia before Napoleon invaded?
Yes — Germaine de Staël arrived in Moscow in July 1812, approximately six weeks before Napoleon's Grande Armée entered the city on September 14, 1812. She was in Russia as part of her flight from Napoleon's agents, who had been pursuing her since she attempted to leave Switzerland for England and was turned back at the Austrian border. After leaving France's sphere of control through Germany and Austria, she traveled through Poland and Russia, spending time in St. Petersburg (where Tsar Alexander I received her) and Moscow before sailing from Finland to Sweden and eventually reaching London. Her account of Russia in Ten Years of Exile is therefore written with the foreknowledge of what was about to happen — she left Moscow knowing that Napoleon was advancing and that the city would be occupied — which gives the Russia sections of the memoir a peculiar double perspective: the Russia she describes is both the country as she experienced it in July 1812 and the country as history had already transformed it by the time she was writing. Her portrait of Alexander I, whom she admired as a liberal monarch, and her description of Russian society at the moment before the invasion make Ten Years of Exile an invaluable historical document of the period.
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