Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin - later Baroness Dudevant (July 1, 1804 - June 8, 1876) was a French novelist and early feminist (prior to the invention of the word), writing under the pseudonym of George Sand. 

She was born in Paris. In 1822, she married Baron Casimir Dudevant, and they had two children, Maurice (b. 1823) and Solange (b. 1828). In 1835 she parted from her husband. 

Her first novel, "Rose Et Blanche" (1831) was written in collaboration with Jules Sandeau, from whom she took her pen-name. 

After parting from her husband she made less and less a secret of preferring men's clothes to women's. At first she would still dress up as a woman for social occasions, but left that habit more and more aside. This was very exceptional for the 19th century, where social codes - especially in the higher classes - were of the highest importance. She was probably one of the first every-day transvestites. As a social consequence she lost as good as all privileges attached to being a Baroness (while it was also a part of the mores of these days that women of higher classes could live physically separated from their husbands without losing any privilege, if, and only if, not showing any irregularity to the outer world). 

She was linked romantically with Alfred de Musset (summer 1833 - March 1834), Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin (1838-1847) whom she had met in Paris in 1831. 

At Mallorca one can still visit the (then abandoned) carthusian monastery of Valldemossa, where she spent the winter 1838-1839 with Frédéric Chopin and her children, see: http://www.valldemossa.com/museoin.htm 

She left Chopin shortly before he died from tuberculosis. 

Her successful novels: "Indiana" (1832), "Lélia" (1833), "Mauprat" (1837), "Le Compagnon du Tour de France" (1840), "Consuelo" (1842 - 1843), "Le Meunier d'Angibault" (1845). 

Drawing from her childhood experiences of the countryside, she wrote the rural novels  "La Mare du Diable" (1846), "François le Champi" (1847 - 1848), "La Petite Fadette" (1849), "Les Beaux Messieurs Bois-Dore". 

Her theatre pieces and autobiographical pieces, "Histoire de ma vie" (1855), "Elle et Lui" (1859) (about her affair with Musset), "Journal Intime" (posth. 1926), "Correspondance". 

George Sand died at Nohant, near Chateauroux, in the Indre département of France on June 8, 1876 at the age of 72. She was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France. 

Source

This information has been sourced from the "3ème édition du Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de la Langue Française". 

External link

• Full text of George Sand, some aspects of her life and writings from Project Gutenberg