Sand2023

George Sand (1804–1876)

George Sand, the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Franceuil, was one of the most important French novelists of the nineteenth century, an equal of her male contemporaries Balzac, Flaubert, and Victor Hugo. Her life dovetailed with a tumultuous period in French history that was bracketed by the Napoleonic Empire and the Third Republic, with revolution, war, and seesawing regimes in between. Her parents were from opposite classes, representing the two poles of French society frequently in conflict during this era. Her father, Maurice Dupin de Francueil, was an aristocrat and a distant relative of the King of Poland, while her mother, Antoinette Sophie-Victoire Delaborde, was the working-class daughter of a billiard hall owner and bird vendor. Though born in Paris, Sand spent much of her childhood at Nohant, the family estate in Berry where she was raised by her paternal grandmother. This house, surrounded by gardens and a woodland park, was enormously important to Sand, serving as a refuge and a source of inspiration for her myriad creative pursuits.

Sand’s extraordinary biography—full of passionate love affairs, adventurous travel, and tireless productivity—reads like the stuff of Romantic novels.