In her sixties, George Sand delighted in spinning tales that entertained and educated her two adored granddaughters, Aurore and Gabrielle. Fortunately, she also published thirteen of them for the rest of us to enjoy. The Castle of Pictures presents four of these stories, three of which have never before been translated into English. Both girls and boys are depicted in these stories as empowered by curiosity, hard work, persistence, and honesty. They successfully protect themselves from danger by using their ingenuity and remaining faithful to their own consciences. In the title story a girl becomes an artist through the persistent nurturance of her own talent despite opposition from her father, himself a painter. "What Flowers Say" is a wickedly funny satire of class snobbery as played out among chrysanthemums, poppies, numerous varieties of roses, and other denizens of the garden. "The Bug-Eyed Fairy" investigates wonders of the insect world invisible to the normal human eye. In "The Talking Oak", an outcast orphan boy learns to rely on hard work and a strong sense of right and wrong to make his way first through the natural world, with the help of The Talking Oak who becomes his first friend, and then through the compexities of the world of grown-ups. Sand never talked down to her granddaughters. Her astonishingly deep knowledge of subjects ranging from botany and lepidopterology to art history, her subtle understanding of the human heart and the creative spirit, and her sense of wonder at the world's beauty and mystery are available here for children of all ages.
Author
The novels Lélia (1833) and Consuelo (1842) among works, plays, and essays of French writer George Sand, pen name of Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, baroness Dudevant, concern the freedom and independence of women. People recognize this best known, most popular memoirist and journalist, more renowned in Europe in her lifetime than Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, People recognize Sand of the most notable writers of the Romantic era of Europe. People celebrated this controversial life, which oftentimes overshadowed her creative production. Known for its blend of romance and realism, her effortless spontaneity proliferated without sacrificing style and form. Sand stated the primary happiness in life in love and so focused on relationships in most of her novels as she tackled the complexities of politics, society, and gender. People best know Sand for bold statements about the rights in 19th-century society, her exploration of contemporary social and philosophical issues, and her depiction of the lives and language of provincials. Set of influences of each period of her literary career focused on specific themes. Her rustic perhaps truly represented her form as an author. Her first period reflected her rebellion against the bonds of marriage and deal largely with the relationships between men and women. English poet Lord Byron and French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau clearly influenced Sand with romantic novels, full of passionate personal revolt and ardent feminism, attitudes that went against societal conventions and outraged her early British and American critics. These extremely successful early Indiana , Lelia, and Jacques (1834) established Sand as an important literary voice for her generation. Pastorals, which depict rural scenes and peasant characters, form the last phase of her career. Her love of the French countryside and her sympathy with the peasants inspired La Mare au Diable (1846) and Francis the Waif (1847–1848), set in Berry. Gentle idealism distinguished these realistic pastorals in background detail; many critics finest considered them her finest. After her pastoral period, she continued until her death, but people remember few today. Unconventional life of George Sand in numerous ways: she fondly dressed in clothing of men to gain access to those parts of Paris, not decorous for ladies to go. She smoked in public to scandalize Parisian society. Lust affairs of Sand included high-profile relationships with the composer Frédéric François Chopin, the novelist Prosper Mérimée, and the poet and playwright Louis Charles Alfred de Musset.
