The Double Life of George Sand - Renee Winegarten (used)

Hardback. Basic Books. 1978. ok condition.(some damaged, but readable pages)

Ardent liberal or exhibitionist, genuine free spirit or insatiable narcissist—few figures have moved so sharply and so scandalously in and out of public view as George Sand.

Now in this new biography, drawing heavily on the recently collected letters of this extraordinary figure as well as on the author's own special, intimate knowledge of French literary life and history, Renee Winegarten focuses on the problem of George Sand as George Sand herself saw it: the problem of an "exceptional" woman doomed to remain a kind of eternal provocation to the society around her. The George Sand we are so compellingly made to see here was a fascinating and totally sympathetic woman whose frustrations and feminist yearnings persisted through that period after the French Revolution when everything seemed possible to the talented, and through a large and rich life which brought her immense fame, the friendship of half of Europe's luminaries, and the love of countless powerful men of genius.

Often taken, in her own time and later, as little more than an overeffusive romantic— a kind of play-acting female Byron-George Sand is revealed in this marvelously written account as someone seriously and consciously contending, on behalf of all women, with the central experiences and issues of womanhood: with daughterhood, with motherhood, and finally, with the desperate need for selfhood.

Contemporary women particularly will find the story of George Sand's struggles both totally familiar and freshly exciting as seen through the mind, the imagination, and the daring of this gigantically talented and vital woman.