French author Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin, better known by pseudonym George Sand, was born in 1804. A distant cousin of Louis XVIII, Sand was, for the most part, raised by her grandmother in her estate of Nohant, a setting that frequently founds its way into her writings. Like so many women of her era, Sands got married at a young age, wedding her husband, Baron Casimir Dudevant, at the age of 19. Yet this, seemingly, is when her conformity with traditional society ends. Shortly after the birth of her two children, she left her husband to embark upon a so-called 'romantic rebellion', during which she had numerous affairs, reputedly with both men and women, the most famous of which was pianist Frederich Chopin.
Her appearance was also at odds with a usual woman of rank, sporting men's clothes in public due to their inexpensive nature, and smoking lliberal amounts of tobacco. Such was the scandal created by Sands, she attracted some heavy criticism, including the wrath of poet Charles Baudelaire, who stated that, 'the fact that there are men who could become enamoured of this slut is indeed a proof of the abasement of the men of this generation'. Her literary debut, 'Rose et Blanche', was a collabrative effort with Jules Sandeua, whose name influenced her own later pseudonym. Her first solo novel, 'Indiana', is arguably her most famous work. Sand died in 1876, at the age of 71.
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