DIIDEVANT, AMANTINE LUCILE AURORE, MADAME, a French authoress, who has attained an extraordinary celebrity under the name of GEORGE SAND. She was b. at Paris in 1804, and descended by the father's side from the famous marshal de Saxe. Her maiden name was Dupin. After having received a strict conventual education (1817-20), she married M. Dudevant in 1822; but in the course of a few years, finding the lack of congeniality of sentiment intolerable, she arranged a separation with her husband in 1831, and repaired to Paris, where at first she was hard pushed to secure a livelihood. Her first literary efforts made their appearance in the Figaro. In con junction with her friend and companion for the time, Jules Sandeau, from whose name • she formed her nom de plume, she wrote a romance, entitled Rose et Blanche (1882), which only occasionally rises above mediocrity, and gave no hint of the splendid ability first fully developed in Indiana, published iu the same year. This romance, in which a glowing heart, deeply wounded by the pressure of social relations, gives vent to its feelings, excited considerable interest. This was increased to the utmost by the suc ceeding romances— Valentine (1832); Lelia (1833); Jacques (1834); Andre (1835); Leone Leoni (1835); and Simon (1836). During the next two years, she published a great variety of works, in which she showed • herself to be deeply influenced by the age in which she was living. In addition to her purely imaginative productions, Madame D. found time to contribute miscellaneous essays and political articles to the journal entitled Le Monde, so long as it was edited by Lamennais. She was much occupied at this time with philosophical and theological speculations, and their influence may be traced in the Spiridion (1839), and the extraor dinary piece of prose poetry, entitled Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre (1840). She cherished, moreover, republican ideas of the wildest nature, which appeared conspicuously in the Compagnon du Tour de France (1840), and in Pauline. Her brilliant literary success having now placed her in comfortable cir cumstances, she obtained a legal divorce from her husband, and thus secured possession of a portion of the property which she had brought to him as her dowry. She now
occupied herself with the education of her two children, and spent her time, sometimes in Paris, sometimes at her estate in Berri, where she had passed her childhood, or in journeys into Switzerland and Italy. A dispute with the editors of the Revue des. Deux Mondes, which, from 1833 to 1841, had regularly published her works in chapters before they appeared in a separate form, induced her to start the Revue Independante, in con junction with P. Leroux and Viardot. For this new review, she wrote Horace, Consuelo, and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt (1842-43), three romances deeply imbued with democratic feelings and sentiments, which are apparent likewise in Jeanne (1844), and which in the Meunier d' Angibault (1845), becomes altogether socialistic. It would be impossible to enumerate the works which flowed from her rapid pen between this period and the revolution of 1848. It is sufficient to say that her socialistic sympathies predominate in all of them; but if the logic is not convincing, the vigor and purity of her imagination are undeniable. This is always the case with Madame Dudevant. Even those who disapprove of her exaggerated and one-sided ideas, and views of life, must admire the perfect form, the captivating style, the plastic finish, and the great affluence of thought and sentiment displayed in all her productions. Her finest romances are Valentine, Andre, and, in particular parts, Consuelo, which is her best known work. Of her smaller pieces, La Mare au Diable, is a masterpiece of its kind, and indeed, considered from an mssthetic point of view, is the most complete production of her pen. After the revolution of Feb., Madame D. for a short time wasted her talents on the barren politics of the day. She subsequently devoted herself to writing plays, which were received less favorably than her novels, though the Marquis de Villemer, and one or two more, were very successful. In 1854, she published Histoire de Ma Vie; in 1871, Journal dun Voyageur pendant la Guerre; and in 1873, Impressions et Souvenirs. Madame D. died on June 8, 1876.