George Sand

George Sand was the most famous—and most scandalous—woman in nineteenth-century France. As a writer, she was enormously prolific—she wrote more than ninety novels, thirty-five plays, and thousands of pages of autobiography. She inspired writers as diverse as Flaubert and Proust but is often remembered for her love affairs with such figures as Musset and Chopin. Her affair with Chopin is the most notorious: their nine-year relationship ended in 1847 when Sand began to suspect that the composer had fallen in love with her daughter, Solange.

Drawing on archival sources—much of it neglected by Sands previous biographers—Elizabeth Harlan examines the intertwined issues of maternity and identity that haunt Sands writing and defined her life. Why was Sands relationship with her daughter so fraught? Why was a woman so famous for her personal and literary audacity ultimately so conflicted about womens liberation? In an effort to solve the riddle of Sands identity, Harlan examines a latticework of lives that include Solange, Sands mother and grandmother, and Sands own protagonists, whose stories amplify her own.

An engrossing biography that unravels the mystery of nineteenth-century Frances most prominent woman

A prolific writer of novels, plays, and memoirs, George Sand was also romantically involved with many famous men. This engrossing biography unravels the mystery of nineteenth-century Frances most prominent and scandalous woman, examining the intertwined issues of maternity and identity that haunt her writing and defined her life.

Elizabeth Harlan is the author of two novels, Footfalls and Watershed. She lives in Paris.