SAND, GEORGE. — Pseudonym of Amandine-Lucie-Aurore Dupin, French writer, born in Paris on 1 July 1804, died at Nohant on 7 June 1876.
Born to a Parisian milliner and Maurice Dupin, grandson of Marshal Maurizio di Sassonia, from her earliest youth she displayed that rebellious and pretentious, exalted and passionate temperament which was later to characterize her life. At about fifteen she underwent a crisis of mysticism. At eighteen, in order to become independent of her family, she married Casimir Dudevant, a retired colonel, by whom she had two children. In 1831, still seeking freedom, she abandoned her family for Paris, where she began her career as a writer. Her first works, Indiana, Valentine (1832), and Lélia (1833), already met with considerable success, because they fully satisfied the Romantic taste of the time. From then on, her life was one continuous succession of piquant and scandalous relationships. Her journey to Venice with de Musset is famous. Among her most notable friendships were those with Heine, Balzac, Flaubert, and finally Chopin. She also took an interest in politics and became the first example of a completely “emancipated” woman of modern times.
In her enormous output (more than 140 volumes), she sums up the merits and, even more, the defects of the entire Romantic age, and, because of a lyrical and mystifying rhetoric derived chiefly from Byron, as well as a thesis-driven subject matter often informed by confused political and social motives, she proves to be of very little importance when judged by modern criticism. Her life and works often constitute a veritable apology for immorality. Sunt all'Indice omnes fabulae amatoriae (decr. 27 Nov. 1840; 30 March 1841; 5 April 1842; Dec. 1863).