George Sand: True Genius, True Woman 
Severine Vidal & Kim Consigny, SelfMadeHero, £18.99

OURS is essentially a visual age, a fact which must explain why graphic novels have exploded in popularity in recent years, with one American market research company recording over 16 million copies sold last year, and Penguin Random House aiming to see “a graphic novel on every bookshelf.”

What might more accurately be called a graphic biography, this life of George Sand portrays an author generally better known, if at all today, for her relationship to Chopin. She was in fact by far the most popular French novelist in 19th-century Britain. 

In her prolific output of 58 novels and plays, coupled with the public demonstration of her unconventional lifestyle, she established her reputation as a forerunner in demands for feminine independence – “the beards have all the power”!

Like the Bronte sisters Aurore Dupin found it necessary to adopt a masculine pseudonym to get her work published but from the outset in 1832 she became a literary celebrity. The freedom of her sex life, her partners including many of the literary and artistic notables of French society, and her overt rejection of restrictive social codes by adopting male attire equally entranced and provoked bourgeois France.

Most interesting, coming from an aristocratic lineage and a convent education, were her socialist beliefs which led to her involvement in the mid-century aftershocks of post-Napoleonic France and in 1841 helped to establish a socialist newspaper “La Revue Independante.”

Kim Consigny’s varied monochrome panels of this 333-page graphic account of Sand’s life have a deceptive vitality and even symbolic humour – in our heroine’s sex scenes she is always on top – and with Severine Vidal’s modern language speech bubbles carry the reader-cum-viewer through a life set in its historical context with the speed of a film.

But the question arises, who is this book intended for? 

Maybe a senior school library would be appropriate although, while a scholar or academic would find plenty of detail of Sand’s life, they would miss in-depth analysis. The comic book enthusiast would enjoy the impressive cartoonery of the art but might find the historical subject unexciting. And yet, those who appreciate the blend of artistic and literary skills involved in graphic literature will certainly find much to value here.