Famous Women: George Sand
Public-domain ebook
Famous Women: George Sand
Language: en4,646 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Biographies·French Literature·History - European
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #28209.
About this book
The work is a biographical study of George Sand, written by Bertha Thomas, who frames the narrative as a concise sketch for English readers. It opens with a candid acknowledgment that the source material, letters, memoirs, and scattered documents, remains incomplete, and that a full‑scale biography is still beyond reach. Thomas therefore promises a selective survey of the most salient facts, tracing Sand’s lineage, childhood, and early influences before moving into the chapters that chart her literary debut, political engagement, and later years. The opening pages already lay out a detailed family background, describing the mixed noble and modest ancestry that shaped the future novelist’s identity, and setting the stage for the series of thematic chapters that follow.
The prose reflects the scholarly tone of late‑19th‑century biography, with a measured, almost formal diction and frequent parenthetical asides. Thomas’s voice is that of a careful researcher, attentive to genealogical detail yet aware of the gaps in the record. Readers who enjoy meticulously sourced portraits of cultural figures, especially those interested in French literary history, women’s lives, or the social currents of the Restoration and July Monarchy, will find this study both informative and engaging.
Who appears in Famous Women
- George SandMid‑19th‑century French woman, short dark hair, masculine‑styled dress, thoughtful expression
The opening · free to read
By
BERTHA THOMAS.
BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1883.
Copyright, 1883, BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
PREFATORY NOTE.
The authentic materials available for an account of the life of George Sand, although lately increased by the publication of a large part of her correspondence, are still incomplete. Her memoirs by her own hand, dealing fully with her early life alone, remain unsupplemented by any entire and detailed biography, for which, indeed, the time seems hardly yet come. Hence one among many obvious difficulties in the way of this attempt to prepare for English readers a brief sketch that shall at least indicate all the more salient features of a life of singularly varied aspect.
Much, though of interest in itself, must here be omitted, as beyond the scope of the present study. There are points again into which, as touching persons still living or quite recently deceased, it would be premature to enter. But none seem of such importance as to forbid the endeavor, by a careful review of those facts in the life of George Sand which most justly represent her character as a whole, and were the determining influences on her career and on her work, to arrive at truth and completeness of general outline, the utmost it is possible to hope to accomplish in this little volume.
BERTHA THOMAS.
CONTENTS.
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