Excerpt from The Great Modern French Stories: A Chronological AnthologyMme. De Stael, however, had much to do with the liberal izing of French letters. On the formal and aesthetic side Of literature her in¿uence was nugatory, but she reacted in a salutary manner against the cramping restrictions Of the purely classic viewpoint. She brought new, if borrowed, ideas to the novel, she broadened its outlook, and she awakened in the younger generation of writers a spirit of freedom and intrepidity. It was the fecundity of her thought which enriched all the serious fiction writing which fol lowed her. Her Delphine and Corinne, though scarcely read today, played very much the same part in the devel Opment of French fiction that the works of Richter and Goethe played in the development of German fiction. The novel became a medium not for esthetic form but for esthetic ideas. In her the literature of her country donned the garb of cosmopolitanism.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.