George Sand

6 Feb, 2020 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and life of one of the most popular writers in Europe in C19th, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804-1876) who wrote under the name George Sand. When she wrote her first novel under that name, she referred to herself as a man. This was in Indiana (1832), which had the main character breaking away from her unhappy marriage. It made an immediate impact as it overturned the social conventions of the time and it drew on her own early marriage to an older man, Casimir Dudevant. Once Sand’s identity was widely known, her works became extremely popular in French and in translation, particularly her rural novels, outselling Hugo and Balzac in Britain, perhaps buoyed by an interest in her personal life, as well as by her ideas on the rights and education of women and strength of her writing.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Belinda Jack 2 episodes
    Fellow and Tutor in French at Christ Church, University of Oxford
  • Angela Ryan No other episodes
    Senior Lecturer in French at University College Cork
  • Nigel Harkness No other episodes
    Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of French at Newcastle University

Reading list

  • George Sand ecrivain: Un grand fleuve d'Amerique
    Beatrice Didier (Presses Universitaires de France, 1998) Google Books →
  • Men of Their Words: The Poetics of Masculinity in George Sand's Fiction
    Nigel Harkness (Legenda, 2007) Google Books →
  • George Sand and Autobiography
    Janet Hiddleston (Legenda, 1999) Google Books →
  • George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large
    Belinda Jack (Chatto & Windus, 1999) Google Books →
  • George Sand: Writing for her Life
    Isabelle Hoog Naginski (Rutgers University Press, 1991) Google Books →
  • George Sand
    Martine Reid (trans. Gretchen van Slyke) (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018) Google Books →
  • A Winter in Majorca
    George Sand (trans. W. Kirkbride) (Ediciones de Ayer, 1970) Google Books →
  • Indiana
    George Sand (trans. Sylvia Raphael) (Oxford University Press, 2008) Google Books →
  • Un hiver a Majorque
    George Sand (ed. Angela Ryan) (Champion, 2013) Google Books →
  • La Petite Fadette
    George Sand (trans. Gretchen van Slyke) (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017) Google Books →
  • Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand
    George Sand (State University of New York Press, 1991) Google Books →
  • George Sand and Idealism
    Naomi Schor (Columbia University Press, 1993) Google Books →

Related episodes

Programme ID: m000dxsr

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dxsr

Auto-category: 800.1 (Literature (Belles-lettres))

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. Georges Sand, 1804 to 1876, was one of the most popular and celebrated French novelists in the 19th century and she defied conventions.