Fiona Sampson Becoming George : The Invention of George Sand Hardcover Book

Sand seems as alive as if she had just walked out of the room... quietly witty... fascinating The TimesThoughtprovoking... written with energy, passion and commitment to its fascinating subject Literary ReviewMy friends will respect me, I hope, just as much under my jacket as under my dress... So take me for a man or a woman as you wish. By the age of thirty, the novelist who had been born Aurore Dupin in 1804 had become the internationally renowned George Sand. In English, her daring literary experiments were outselling even Victor Hugo. But the legend of Sand herself scandalised Paris. Not only prodigiously talented but cigarsmoking, crossdressing and promiscuous, she seemed to break all the rules society set for women. What can we learn from the way she lived? Was her iconoclasm simply an act of courage, a declaration of absolute autonomy? Or did her emotional and creative relationships with many of the leading figures of her day from Fryderyk Chopin to Gustave Flaubert, and Alfred de Musset to Eugne Delacroix form part of her dialogue with the world around her a dialogue that is intrinsic to writing itself?In Becoming George, awardwinning poet and biographer Fiona Sampson rehabilitates Sand as an intellectual and artistic giant, the beating heart of French literature in the nineteenth century. Too often underestimated in the century and a half since her death, she speaks to us today about ecology, politics, society, gender with brilliant prescience a figure ahead of... | Fiona Sampson Becoming George : The Invention of George Sand Hardcover Book