George Sand

George Sand (1804-1876) was a French writer and novelist. George Sand is a pseudonym of the author whose real name was Amandine Aurore Lucile Dudevant or simply Aurore Dupin. She focused on unconventional love, free of class and social barriers.

She was born in Paris, married Baron Dudevant, a man of means, but with no literary sympathies. She became the mother of two children, and after nine years effected a separation from him (1831) and went to Paris to push her way in literature, and involved herself in some unhappy liaisons, notably with Alfred de Musset and Chopin. After 1848 she experienced a sharp revulsion from this Bohemian life, and her last twenty-five years were spent in the quiet "Châtelaine of Nohant" (inherited) in never-ceasing literary activity, and in entertaining the many eminent littérateurs of all countries who visited her.

Her voluminous works reflect the strange shifts of her life. "Indiana," "Lélia," and other novels reveal the tumult and revolt that mark her early years in Paris. "Consuelo," "Spiridion," &c., show her engaged with political, philosophical, and religious speculation. "Elle et Lui" and "Lucrezia Floriani" are the outcome of her relations with Musset and Chopin. The calm of her later years is reflected in "La Petite Fadette," "François le Champi," and other charming studies of rustic life. Her "Histoire de ma Vie" and posthumous letters also deserve notice. Her work is characterised by a richly flowing style, an exuberant imagination, and is throughout full of true colour and vivid emotion.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Where love is absent there can be no woman.

- Leila

• No one makes a revolution by himself.

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq