Letters of George Sand

Author / Creator

Sand, George, 1804-1876 author

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Summary

""What a brave man she was," said novelist Ivan Turgenev, "and what a good woman." French writer and feminist Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, aka GEORGE SAND (1804-1876), smoked in...

""What a brave man she was," said novelist Ivan Turgenev, "and what a good woman." French writer and feminist Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, aka GEORGE SAND (1804-1876), smoked in public and dressed like a man, carried on scandalous romantic affairs and was an intimate of Chopin and Flaubert...and wrote some of the most intriguing works of 19th-century French literature: novels, plays, autobiographies, literary criticism, and political treatises. This three-volume 1886 collection of her correspondence sheds light on her personality, morality, and ideas on religion, all of which molded the philosophies on women's sexuality and women's freedom that she is famous for today, and aids a deeper understanding of her work and her place in the history of feminism. Volume I begins with a detailed biographical sketch and features the letters of the eight-year-old Mademoiselle Aurore, the young woman she was to become, and the mature artist we remember her as. From her early literary endeavors to the secrets of her cultured society and the friendships and work she was engaged in to her early notoriety in the 1840s, which appears to have bothered her not one whit, this is a fascinating look at the shaping of a woman who would shape Western society at large. Volume II covers the period of the late 1840s through the mid 1860s, and includes rich details of Sand's involvement in the Republican movements of the day, the story of her life in starving-artist straits, her thoughts on life and art, and much more, offering enthralling insight into the philosophy of a woman whose influence is still felt today. Volume III opens with an 1866 letter to Alexandre Dumas critiquing his recent work, and ends with one to her doctor, Henri Favre, mere days before her death in 1876, thanking him for his kind ministrations. In between, we discover a portrait of a woman rich in friendship and love. This volume includes numerous letters to Flaubert, her thoughts on the political turmoil of France at the time, and much more"--Cosimo Classics.

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