The Life of Marie d'Agoult, Alias Daniel Stern

Abstract

Marie de Flavigny (1805-1876). Countess d'Agoult, was one of France's free and independent women long before feminism came into its own. She was Franz Liszt's lover a friend of George Sand and a writer under the name Daniel Stern. She bore two children by her marriage with Count d'Agoult and three by Liszt, including Cosima, who would leaver her first husband to marry Richard Wagner. Despite strains in her personal life (she never gained legal custody of her children and was disinherited by her own family), she made her Paris salon a multilingual centre of European artists, writers and revolutionaries. Through them she partook in and wrote about the great events of her lifetime, including France's 1848 revolution. History has not on the whole treated her well, despite her stature in her own time - much of what is know has been written by partisans for Liszt or Sand. In this biography, the author aims to remove Marie d'Agoult from the shadows of Liszt and Sand and allow her to be recognized in her own right.