In full – Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baronne (baroness) de Staël-Holstein, byname Madame de Staël. Madame de Stael was a French-Swiss woman of letters, political propagandist, and conversationalist, who epitomized the European culture of her time, bridging the history of ideas from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. She also gained fame by maintaining a salon for leading intellectuals. Her writings include novels, plays, moral and political essays, literary criticism, history, autobiographical memoirs, and even a number of poems. Her most important literary contribution was as a theorist of Romanticism. Madamede Stael is on an equal level with René Descartes but I chose to include her rather than him in order to put at least one woman on this list.