Albertine-Adrienne Necker de Saussure

Albertine-Adrienne Necker de Saussure (born 1766, Geneva, Switzerland—died April 20, 1841, Vallée du Salève, near Geneva) was a Swiss woman of letters and author of a long-influential study on the education of women.

She was the daughter of a distinguished Swiss naturalist, and she married a noted botanist who was the nephew and namesake of Louis XVI’s finance minister, Jacques Necker. Her husband was a cousin of Germaine Necker de Staël, who became her friend and sometime collaborator.

Reflecting her strongly religious orientation, the most important book of Necker de Saussure, L’Education progressive; ou, étude sur le cours de la vie, was a significant contribution to educational literature. The work was published in several volumes over the decade 1828–38; it was first translated into English (in part) in Boston (1835) and later (in full) in London (1839–43; 3 vol.). Other works include Notice sur la caractère et les écrits de Mme de Staël (1820; “A Review of the Character and the Writings of Mme de Staël”) and a French translation of August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur (1809–11) as Cours de littérature dramatique, 3 vol. (1814).