George Sand

(1804 - 1876)

Born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin in Paris in 1804, George Sand was raised on her family estate in Nohant, where she lived until separating from her husband in 1831. That year she moved to Paris and began writing for Le Figaro. The following year, under the pseudonym George Sand, she published her debut novel, Indiana, in which the titular heroine finds love after abandoning an unhappy marriage. Hers was “the creative, androgynous mind announced by Coleridge,” wrote one biographer, “the demonstration that one can be a gentle knight and no less ‘male,’ a strong woman and no less ‘female.’ ”