For seventy-five years after her death, George Sand was preemptorily dismissed as a writer of adolescent fiction, not worthy of serious study, "une écriveuse" (a woman scribbler). The only titles that had made an impact were La Mare au diable (1846; translated as Devil's Pool, 1966) and La Petite Fadette (1849); translated as Little Fadette, 1967), deemed appropriate for teenage girls. Readers of Marcel Proust knew François le champi (1848; translated as The Country Waif, 1977) for its prominent place in the opening pages of his Du côté de chez Swann (1913; translated as Swann's Way, 1922), though this did little initially to invite a serious critical investigation of Sand's oeuvre. Sand predicted she would fall from popularity if she failed to keep her name before the public. And even though she produced more than eighty novels, two dozen plays, three volumes of short stories, and many political tracts, even...