French Literature Reviews - 2026

Al. J. M. Rocca, Oeuvres.
Writers: Biography, Letters and Memoirs

Albert Jean Michel Rocca, Oeuvres, Champion-Slatkine, "Tournant des Lumières" collection, 2017.

Known as the second husband of Germaine de Staël, Albert Jean Michel Rocca, known as “John Rocca” (1788-1818), has had his life's path largely overshadowed: his obscure role alongside the then most famous woman in Europe traditionally served as his legacy, and their age difference, combined with his career as a soldier rather than a man of letters, long kept him at the margins of scholarly research. Two hundred years after his passing, however, the Rocca dossier deserves to be reconsidered. The recent publication of the correspondence addressed to him by Staël, along with the discovery of archives—the manuscript of Mal du pays, a virtually unpublished novella written by Rocca in 1817—completes the sketchy portrait of this young man and restores his voice: J. Rocca is also the author of three texts that paint an uncompromising picture of the final embers of Napoleonic Europe. His soldierly memoirs, at the core of the Mémoires sur la guerre des Français en Espagne (1814) and of La Campagne de Walcheren (1817), lucidly analyze the anachronism of conquest and pioneer a melancholic writing of history. The political and psychological crises of the turn of the Enlightenment find a troubling expression in these Works, brought together for the first time.

Stéphanie Genand, president of the Société des études staëliennes, teaches 18th-century literature at the University of Rouen. A specialist in the turn of the Enlightenment, her work focuses on the crisis of knowledge and anthropological reference points between 1760 and 1815. She has dedicated several books to Sade and Germaine de Staël, and has recently co-edited the final volumes of the latter's Correspondance générale (1812-1817).

This volume gathers the writings of Albert Jean Michel Rocca, known as the second husband of Germaine de Staël. Long recognized primarily through his personal association with Staël, Rocca is presented here through his soldierly memoirs and narrative prose, including his reflections on the French campaign in Spain and the Walcheren expedition. Readers interested in the literature of the Napoleonic wars and the cultural history of the turn of the nineteenth century may find this publication of note.

The texts collected in this edition illustrate how military experience intersected with the introspective and melancholic currents characteristic of the late Enlightenment and the early Romantic period. By bringing together these memoirs alongside archival discoveries such as the novella Mal du pays, the publication restores the voice of an author whose life's path was traditionally overshadowed. The volume is part of the Tournant des Lumières collection, which focuses on the intellectual and historical transitions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.