SAND, GEORGE. — Pseudonym of Amandine-Lucie-Aurore Dupin, French writer, b. in Paris on 10 July 1804, d. at Nohant on 7 June 1876.
Born of a Parisian milliner and Maurice Dupin, nephew of Marshal Maurice of Saxony, from her earliest youth she displayed that rebellious and pretentious temperament, exalted and passionate, which was to be the tone of her life. At about fifteen she underwent a mystical crisis. At eighteen, to make herself independent of her family, she married Casimir Dudevant, a retired colonel, by whom she had two children. In 1831, still in search of freedom, she left her family for Paris, where she began her career as a writer. Already with her first works, *Indiana*, *Valentine* (1832) and *Lélia* (1833), she achieved considerable success, for they fully satisfied the romantic taste of the time. From then on, her life was a 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 constituted the first example of a woman totally “emancipated” in modern times.
In her enormous output (over 140 volumes), she embodies the virtues and, more especially, the defects of the entire Romantic age, and, by reason of a lyricizing and mysticizing rhetoric of predominantly Byronian derivation, as well as of a thesis-ridden thematic, often informed by confusedly political and social motifs, she is of very little account in the eyes of present-day criticism. Her life and her works often constitute a veritable apology for immorality. All her amorous tales are on the Index (*decr. 27 Nov. 1840; 30 Mar. 1841; 5 Apr. 1842; Dec. 1863*).