Fiona Sampson

Poet and biographer Fiona Sampson reassesses the life and work of the 19th-century French novelist George Sand, who scandalised Paris and seemed to break every rule for women in polite society.

Sand outsold Victor Hugo in English translation, and her cigar-smoking, cross-dressing and promiscuity scandalised society. Sampson asks what we can learn from the way she lived. Was it an act of courage and a declaration of autonomy? Or were her relationships with the likes of Chopin and Flaubert part of her dialogue with the world and intrinsic to her writing?  Sampson says Sand was an intellectual and artistic giant centuries ahead of her time.

Sampson has been shortlisted twice for the T S Eliot Prize and Forward Prizes. She is a critic and editor and regular contributor to the Guardian, Irish Times, Sunday Times, Independent and the Times Literary Supplement.