Madame de Stael’s relations with the United States lasted from 1789 to 1817. During that period the author of Corinne carried on a correspondence with a number of Americans; she invested hundreds of thousands of francs in American bonds and banks; and she purchased large tracts of land in New York State. From 1804 to 1812 she thought seriously of emigrating to this country. Naturally, therefore, we have a considerable mass of correspondence, to and from her, written by such men as Gouverneur Morris, Simonde de Sismondi, Judge William Cooper, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Gallatin; on these letters, mostly unpublished, the present monograph is based.

Fifty-one of these letters have never been published before, and the remaining sixty-nine are a selection from letters already edited by Professor Hawkins in various French and American periodicals. The letters, penned by fifty-seven authors, are addressed to citizens of a number of countries; all of them have been chosen with careful regard to their historical or literary content. Among those of especial interest to students of American history or of Franco-American relations are the following: d’Alembert, the due de La Rochefoucauld, Lavoisier, and Marat to Benjamin Franklin; Brillat-Savarin to Samuel Miles Hopkins; Sismondi to Andrews Norton, father of Charles Eliot Norton; Clemenceau to John Durand, American editor and art critic; Alexandre Dumas fils to Mrs Margaret Bertha Wright; and especially the nineteen letters written by Alexis de Tocqueville to Theodore Sedgwick, a lawyer of New York City.