Shortly after being exiled from France by Napoleon in October 1803 due to her barely disguised political opposition to the First Empire, she began her book On Germany (French: De l'Allemagne).

De Staël then conceived an idea for a novel which led her to interrupt the preparation of On Germany to begin writing Corinne, or Italy.

[2] As part of her preparatory work for Corinne, Madame de Staël made a trip to Italy starting in December 1804.

Travelling in the company of her three children and their tutor Wilhelm Schlegel, she visited Rome, Turin where her friend the Swiss historian de Sismondi joined her, Milan where she spent around twenty days with the then famous poet Vincenzo Monti, then she crossed the Marches, Ancona and Loreto before arriving in Rome during a flood of the Tiber on 3 February 1805, where she stayed for two weeks.

Madame de Staël then enthusiastically visited Campania, the coast, Vesuvius and Naples, before returning to Rome on 13 March where she attended the celebrations of Holy Week.

Throughout the trip, Madame de Staël accumulated travel notes in several notebooks, parts of which have been preserved: she was interested in landscapes and monuments as well as in the Italians and their customs, and she recorded many ideas which she used later.

[3] Several episodes of the novel are inspired by events that she actually witnessed: an English warship in the Bay of Naples, an epidemic of plague which raged not far from where she travelled, and carnivals and religious ceremonies.

Lord Oswald Nelvil, a Scottish peer, travels to Italy on the advice of his doctors and friends in order to overcome health problems caused in part by a painful bereavement, the death of his father.

The next day, when he wakes up, Oswald finds the city celebrating: they are preparing to crown the poet Corinne, the most famous artist in the country, at the Capitoline Hill.

Oswald hears Corinne improvising at home for her friends and finds himself more and more drawn to her, despite his English expectation that women should not lead this kind of life and must maintain more reserve .

Oswald confides his story to Corinne: in the past, during a stay in France, he fell in love with a young French woman, Madame d'Arbigny.

The latter, although animated by sincere feelings towards him, resorted to tricks to manipulate him in order to keep him in France, including after the start of the Revolution which made Lord Nelvil's position perilous.

When Oswald was called back to England by his father and sensed that he had serious health problems, Madame d'Arbigny told him that she was pregnant.

Lady Edgermond did everything possible to cut Corinne from her Italian ties and to prevent her from exercising her artistic talents, because she was convinced that an English woman must devote herself exclusively to the maintenance of her house and the well-being of her husband.

Corinne was wasting away and bored to death in the remote English countryside, where she found life monotonous and hollow.

Lady Edgermond then told her that she had complete freedom since she is rich, but that she should pass for dead in order to protect her family from the public shame inspired by such a life as an artistic woman.

Corinne finally reveals to Oswald that his own father had thought of her as a future wife for his son, but that at the time he ended up changing his mind in favour of Lucile.

Corinne, asked to participate in an opera buffa, La Fille de l'air, draws on her happiness to play the character of a charming and all-powerful fairy.

Back in England, Oswald, Lord Nelvil finds his regiment immobilised because its departure had been postponed without a precise date.

Meanwhile, Oswald, without news of Corinne who has not written since her arrival in England, believes he has been forgotten and gradually falls in love with Lucile.

Plunged into an abyss of grief, Corinne embarks for Italy and stays alone in Florence, where she is joined by her friend Prince Castel-Forte, who is unable to console her.

Corinne spends her last weeks instructing Juliette as if to pass on her talents in poetry, music, drawing and Italian.