George Sand

An illuminating biography of one of the most enigmatic figures in French literature

Jack's narrative of Sand's helter-skelter life - one so packed with love affairs and work and friendships and quarrels and travel that she seemed almost literally never to sleep - is swift, lucid and emotionally engaging...in looking behind the amazing spectacle at the vexed events and complex ideas that created it, Belinda Jack has written an illuminating and engaging book

Belinda Jack's excellent biography sets this life out against the back-drop of empire, republic, commune...She has made a fine use of rich material

She (Jack) is admirably familiar with the full extent of Sand's prolific output which enables her to feast on rich anecdotes and indulge us with pithy dictums...You are holly convinced that George Sand was a phenomenon

This is clever stuff, brilliantly in key with late 20th century preoccupations. Here is a book for grownups

It is Jack's particular triumph to show that George Sand was always more than the sexy rebel of popular imagining

Belinda Jack's sympathetic rereading and spirited defence of George Sand's fiction sends one straight back to those ignored novels

Belinda Jack is the author of an acclaimed biography of George Sand and Beatrice's Spell: The Enduring Legend of Beatrice Cenci.

'George Sand' (Aurore Dupin, 1804-1876) was France's bestselling writer, rivalled in her time only by Victor Hugo. She was at the centre of French intellectual and artistic life: her circle included Liszt and Delacroiz, Blazac and Flaubert. Yet she was known as much for her excessive life as for her plays, stories and enduring novels like Indiana, Lelia and Mauprat. 
 
The daughter of a prostitute and an aristocrat, Sand grew up acutely aware of social injustice and prejudice. Convent-educated, she became a mischievous, flamboyant rebel: her long, troubled romance with Chopin was just one of many affairs with well-known figures, but her most desperate love was for a beautiful actress.

Belinda Jack

The Enduring Legend of Beatrice Cenci

Beatrice Cenci was executed in Rome in September 1599: she was said to be sixteen, and was hauntingly beautiful. Her crime was the murder of her father, a member of one of the greatest Roman families, but his cruel treatment of her, including incestuous rape, moved the people of the city to take her side. 
 
Weeping crowds lined the streets, and a special mass is still said in Rome on the anniversary of her death. She was at once innocent and guilty, the victim and the perpetrator of appalling crimes. From that time since, the ambivalent image of Beatrice has attracted writers and artists, and often their obsession with her fed their own self-destruction. In this compelling study, Belinda Jack takes on the dangerous challenge of bringing Beatrice to life, and of tracing her power over those who tried to resurrect her, from the tragedy of Shelley to the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, from the sculpture of Harriet Hosmer and the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron to the desperate drama of Antonin Artaud. 
 
As we follow the stories of their lives and ambitions, we see how they suffered critical condemnation for their works about Beatrice, and were sometimes pushed to the brink of insanity. Her story, which is one of lust, passion and violence, contains a powerful sense of the forbidden, the taboo that drives people over the edge. Beatrice's Spell is at once scholarly and utterly engrossing, carrying the power of her story through time.

Belinda Jack

Books by Belinda Jack

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