Séverine Vidal

A scrupulously researched and tenderly revealing biography of one of the great pioneering figures of 19th-century French literature. Born in 1804 — at a time when women were deprived of their civil rights (along with minors, criminals, and the insane) — Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin grew up to defy those norms, both in her life and her writing. Adopting the...