Independent woman George Sand (1804–1876), born Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin to an aristocratic Parisian family, did the unthinkable in her timedreams to write.

“We cannot tear out a single page of our life,” she observed, “but we can throw the whole book in the fire.” She understood how radical it was for a woman to begin again, yet she chose to remain true to her heart, even when it meant facing scandal and gossip.

A bold and dynamic woman, Sand had open love affairs, including famous liaisons with composer Frédéric Chopin and poet Alfred de Musset. She cross-dressed, smoked a pipe, and said with fierce honesty, “Man is only too glad to have (a) woman hold strictly to the Christian principle of suffering in silence.”

Clearly, she was a woman born ahead of her time.

Biographer René Doumic called the courageous Sand “a genius…and daughter of Rousseau,” and celebrated her spirit as “vibrating with every breath, electrified by every storm, she looked up at every cloud behind which she fancied she saw a star shining.”

An inspiration to writers Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Virginia Woolf, Victor Hugo, and many others, Sand’s prolific career included more than 100 novels, plays, and essays, including her famous novel Lélia (1833).

“It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older one climbs with surprising strides,” she remarked. For Sand, love and creativity did not fade with age; they deepened with time.