Description

"What a brave man she was," said novelist Ivan Turgenev, "and what a good woman." French writer and feminist Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, aka GEORGE SAND (1804-1876), smoked in public and dressed like a man, carried on scandalous romantic affairs and was an intimate of Chopin and Flaubert...and wrote some of the most intriguing works of 19th-century French literature: novels, plays, autobiographies, literary criticism, and political treatises. This three-volume 1886 collection of her correspondence sheds light on her personality, morality, and ideas on religion, all of which molded the philosophies on women's sexuality and women's freedom that she is famous for today, and aids a deeper understanding of her work and her place in the history of feminism. Volume III opens with an 1866 letter to Alexandre Dumas critiquing his recent work, and ends with one to her doctor, Henri Favre, mere days before her death in 1876, thanking him for his kind ministrations. In between, we discover a portrait of a woman rich in friendship and love. This volume includes numerous letters to Flaubert, her thoughts on the political turmoil of France at the time, and much more.