Becoming George

By the age of thirty, the novelist who had been born Aurore Dupin in 1804 had become the internationally renowned George Sand. In English, her daring literary experiments were out-selling even Victor Hugo. But the legend of Sand herself scandalised Paris. Not only prodigiously talented but cigar-smoking, cross-dressing and promiscuous, she seemed to break all the rules society set for women. Gustave Flaubert, and Alfred de Musset to Eugène Delacroix - form part of her dialogue with the world around her: a dialogue that is intrinsic to writing itself?