First Trousered Iconoclast

George Sand, A Biography By Curtis Cate

Houghton, 812 pp., $17.50 At a time when society is attempting to redefine the word Woman it is perhaps inevitable that we be treated to a new biography of that first trousered iconoclast, George Sand. Curtis Cate, in this many-sided portrait, lays to rest some of the more outrageous legends which have grown up around her—nymphomania, frigidity, lesbianism—and treats her not as a simplistic stereotype but as a highly complex, compelling individual.