George Sand
LUCILE-AURORE DUPIN, as she was born in Berry in 1804, was the great-great-granddaughter of the famous Marshal Saxe. She had in her veins the blood of peasant and aristocrat, which brought to her that understanding of both which played so great a part in her future books. Married to a Monsieur Dudevant, who had no understanding of her intensely romantic and imaginative temperament, she early separated from him, and in 1831 made her way to Paris to make a living for herself and her two children in whatever humble way she could. Fortunately for the world and for herself, all failed till she discovered that she could write. She quickly made her pseudonym of George Sand famous. There followed a life of prodigious industry with the pen. The French edition of her works contains 107 volumes. She died in 1876.
George Sand was a most extraordinary human being. Possessed of a great fund of common sense, she had the heart of a gamin. She introduced the French peasant to literature with a rare understanding, yet she was famous in Paris for her adventure with Alfred de Musset, her cigars, and her masculine attire. She was the high priestess of the great romantic movement, yet she has painted the simple life of rural France as no other writer has done. "Indiana," "Leila," "Consuelo," "La Mare au Diable," "La Petite Fadette," "Francois le Champi," "Le Marquis de Villemer," are but a few of the books of a woman of genius.