Suzanne Curchod (1737-94) the highly educated and beautiful daughter of a Swiss pastor, was living at Lausanne when she agreed to marry the young Edward Gibbon, but the engagement was broken off. Employed as companion to the then fiancee of Jacques Necker (1732-1804), later the finance minister of Louis XVI, she married him in 1764. Their only daughter, Anne Louise Germaine, is better known as Madame de Stael. Madame Necker was eager for her husband, a wealthy banker, to pursue a political career, but Jacques Necker's efforts towards financial reform made him unpopular at court, and his dismissal in July 1789 was one of the triggers for the French Revolution. His subsequent failure to control events led to his retirement to Switzerland in 1790. This biography, written by a descendant, the comte d'Haussonville, and translated by Henry Trollope, the son of Anthony, was published in English in 1882.

Translated by: Henry M. Trollope