George Sand, Chopin

On this day in 1804 George Sand (Aurore Dupin) was born. Sand was as popular in revolutionary France as her contemporary, Charles Dickens, was in Victorian England, and even more prolific: over seventy novels, two dozen plays, and published correspondence which runs to twenty-five volumes. But if Dickens remains well-known because of his characters, it is the dare of Sand's own life that now attracts most attention -- her cross-dressing, her cigars, her feminism, her bisexuality, her relationships with Chopin and other leading figures (de Musset, Delacroix, Flaubert, Balzac, Liszt) in literary-artistic Paris.