On this day in 1804 George Sand (Aurore Dupin) was born. Sand was as popular in revolutionary France as her contemporary, Charles Dickens, was in Victorian England, and even more prolific: over seventy novels, two dozen plays, and published correspondence which runs to twenty-five volumes. But if Dickens remains well-known because of his characters, it is the dare of Sand's own life that now attracts most attention -- her cross-dressing, her cigars, her feminism, her bisexuality, her relationships with Chopin and other leading figures (de Musset, Delacroix,
