GEORGE SAND: The Romantic Rebel with Sylvia Sagona

The Baroness Aurore Dudevant saw marriage as a prison sentence and abandoned a life of ease to escape to Paris to make her name as George Sand in the tough male world of journalism. In an amazing career which spanned most of the 19th century she lived out at least three lives; firstly, as femme fatale and muse of Chopin, de Musset and Liszt: as ardent socialist preaching the rights of women: and above all as writer of thirty scandalous romantic novels and a tell all biography in which the main players in French society were exposed.

Sylvia Sagona is an internationally recognised specialist on 19th century French society. She retired from the French Department at The University of Melbourne to work on historical documentaries for French and Australian television and is currently researching a book on the invention of the restaurant in Paris.

Josef Danhauser (1805-1845), Liszt fantasising at the piano, 1840, Staatliche Museum, Berlin