Lelia - Softcover

George Sand

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253202469 ISBN 13: 9780253202468

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1982

Synopsis

Regarded as one of Sand's best novels, Lélia is an important document in the evolution of women's consciousness. Published in 1833, when Sand was 29, it stunned Victorians by advocating the same standard of morality for men and women and by suggesting that both the prostitute and the married woman were slaves to male desire. Sand also questioned monogamy, fidelity, and monastic celibacy. She later made an unsuccessful attempt to revise the book and to expunge its despair and skepticism.

Although Sand wrote copiously, until recently only a handful of her books were available in English. This first English translation of Lélia is an excellent rendering, capturing the raptures, the mysticism, and the nineteenth-century flavor ot its eternally fascinating subject.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English, French (translation)

Review:

"With this excellent translation by Maria Espinosa, George Sand's quite unjustly forotten Lélia becomes available to the reading public. Both Ellen Moers's foreword and Espinosa's concise and informative introudction provide a context that underscores the novel's unique place and significance in the historical and literary configuration if its time and our own. This translation... opens up, brilliantly, perspectives on a gifted woman's reaction to her world. It should become one of the central texts in women's studies programs."

(Germaine Brée)

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1982
• ISBN 10: 0253202469
• ISBN 13: 9780253202468
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 234