Becoming(成为，变为) George. By Fiona Sampson. W.W. Norton; 400 pages; $35. Doubleday; £22
《成为乔治》。菲奥娜·桑普森著。W.W.诺顿出版社；400页；35美元。双日出版社；22英镑。
HOW MUCH do you know about George Sand? If you are an Anglophone(讲英语的) reader, the answer is probably “not a lot”. You might recall that she was a French writer and that “George Sand” was a pseudonym(笔名，假名) (her real name was Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil). Perhaps you know that she wore men’s clothes and smoked cigars, or that she had a long affair(风流韵事，恋情) with Frédéric Chopin, a celebrated(著名的，备受赞誉的) composer. Only a few, however, will be able to name her works—and even fewer can claim to have actually read them. (Francophone(讲法语的) readers, meanwhile, may have studied her books in school.)
你对乔治·桑了解多少？如果你是英语读者，答案很可能是“不多”。你可能记得她是法国作家，“乔治·桑”是笔名（真名为阿芒蒂娜-吕西尔-奥萝尔·杜班·德·弗朗克伊）。或许你知道她穿男装、抽雪茄，或者与著名作曲家弗雷德里克·肖邦有过长期恋情。然而，只有少数人能说出她的作品——能声称真正读过的人更少。（而法语读者可能在学校学习过她的书。）
With a new biography, Fiona Sampson, a poet, hopes to change that. She argues that Sand should be thought of as “one of the great novelists of the 19th century”. Sand was prolific—she had to be, given she supported herself and various lovers by her pen—and over the course of a 45-year career she produced more than 50 novels, scores of essays, memoirs and plays, as well as thousands of letters.(桑多产的原因及其成果。) Ms Sampson argues that the vast body of work was influential, too, probing the inner lives of her female characters and containing “some of the first ecological literature(生态文学) and pioneering fictions of rural life”.
诗人菲奥娜·桑普森希望通过一部新传记改变这种状况。她认为桑应被视为“19世纪最伟大的小说家之一”。桑作品多产——她不得不如此，因为她靠写作养活自己和多个情人——在45年的创作生涯中，她创作了50多部小说、大量散文、回忆录和戏剧，以及数千封信件。桑普森女士认为这些宏大作品也颇具影响力，深入探索了女性角色的内心世界，并包含了“最早的一批生态文学和开创性的乡村生活小说”。