The Book Prize Index

Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël

J. Christopher Herold

GERMAINE DE STAËL: Mistress to an Age. An aristocrat and daughter of great wealth, she assisted at the birth of the French Revolution; her days and nights a turmoil of political and amorous intrigue, she wrote novels at the breakfast table and pamphlets while she changed her clothes. Disciple of constancy and the grand passion, she carried on ardent, profound love affairs with four brilliant, demanding men at the same time—and satisfied and tortured them all. Genius, great heart, great lover, any man who knew Germaine was hers forever. "An unforgettable portrait of a many-sided woman...as remarkable, as biting as that legendary figure herself"—Saturday Review

BiographyBiography · medium confidenceBiography81 signalsLlm Classifier: Biography -> BiographyGoogle Books: History -> HistoryKeyword Classifier: Biography -> BiographyPresidential Biography

Award History

1 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
National Book Award for NonfictionMajor1959WinnerSecondary source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • Madame de Staël72%
    Show lower-confidence suggestions

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • GERMAINE DE STAËL66%

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 62%.