Reviewed by: George Sand by Martine Reid S. Pascale Dewey Reid, Martine. George Sand. Trans. and foreword by Gretchen van Slyke. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. Pp. [i]-xxi; 258. ISBN 978-0-08106-9. $29.95 (cloth). $13.99 (eBook). This award-winning biography of the free-spirited George Sand, hailed and reviled romantic novelist, playwright, outspoken feminist, socialist, anticlerical and idealist, draws the most complete and vivid portrait of an exceptional woman, eager to make literary space for moral and political commitment in the polarized and misogynistic nineteenth-century French society. Sand, in spite of the repressive Napoleonic code, exercised great influence over the intellectual and political life of her time, at home and abroad. Posterity, however, failed to recognize the great woman of letters she was and is. Reid, thus, places her amongst Hugo, Balzac and Flaubert who were her friends and correspondents. She uncovers Sand's aspirations, convictions and innovations within the literary and musical sphere and in the political arena from her debut as a budding author in 1830 until her painful death of intestinal cancer, in 1876. To do Sand justice, Reid examines novels, plays, volumes of autobiographical texts and correspondence, and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles. Drawing from the most recent French and English biographies as well as just published texts by and about Sand, Reid aims to redress Sand's distorted legacy faulting a misguided French canon for its failure to appreciate this genius and pioneer of a new genre. Sand's novels once labeled sentimental and or "rustic novels" are too easily dismissed. Reid debunks entrenched prejudices and die-hard clichés still clinging to Sand's famous/infamous legend (smoking cigars and collecting lovers) to emphasize contextualized testimonies of those who knew her well and understood her true motives. Reid carefully analyzes the multi-layered significance of Sand's chosen nom de plume, a result of particularly complex personal experiences by which this fiercely independent, self-made woman forged for herself a public image by which she lived as she saw fit: husband, lovers, children, the books and plays she wrote, the expressions of her political commitment, her wide-ranging artistic and scientific interests and the ways she organized her days and nights in a busy household, are carefully reviewed and converge to breathe life back into "the phenomenon Sand." Reid depicts the saga of a fascinating, magnetic, resilient woman writer, mother, mentor, estate manager, generous in friendship and passionate in her constant quest for love, while remaining honest and true to herself. Sand understood, cannily, that literature was one of the few domains where women [End Page 148] could get ahead in the world. She seized the opportunity offered by the advent of journalism and "industrial literature" and used her pen to educate her readership calling for social justice and equality for the powerless. She pursued knowledge with scientific curiosity (botany, mineralogy), artistic expressions and interests (music and puppetry) besides literature and philosophy that brought her fame, freedom and a renewed identity. If she attracted public attention by wearing masculine attire and comfortable shoes, it was more for practical convenience and economic reasons than to scandalize the bourgeois. She began selling articles and short stories to newspapers, lived like a man, made money, had love affairs without giving up any of what the world deemed traditional feminine attributes (make jam, be a good housekeeper and mother, manage the Nohant estate) but let her emotions run her life when the right lover came along. Not quite as radical as she sounded to the horrified conservatives of her day, she did not denounce marriage, only the institution of marriage as a commercial contract that translated as a life of servitude for women. She wanted a wife to have equal rights with her husband, something radically new in literature. As a child of the Romantic Age, the love she dreamed of had to involve the complete "embrace of twin souls." With such high standards, her love life was marked by a series of severe disillusionments (Musset, Chopin, Mérimée). Her maternal instinct was shaken by her difficult daughter (of dubious paternity). Notwithstanding, Sand's warm and generous heart made...