33 Comments

You didn't even mention her relationship with Frederic Chopin. They were tight.

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I didn't mention a lot of things, but I was just about at the full length of the email! I guess I'm pretty OCD about never running over that limit. Not for me.

Tell me things about their relationship.

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Mar 2Liked by Andrew Smith

George Eliot! Not just another historical, barrier-breaking someone, not just another writer, but another woman using the name of 'George' to get around the prejudices of her age. (For her, it had more to do with shielding her private life. Her real name was Mary Ann Evans).

Middlemarch is her most famous novel - and a good read if one's willing to settle in for the long haul.

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That's a fantastic example. Do you think Eliot got the idea for the name from Sand? I know she was aware of her (Sand's) work.

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Mar 3·edited Mar 3Liked by Andrew Smith

Great question, which sent me down the worlds deepest rabbit hole... It seems like Sand definitely exerted some level of influence on Eliot. I even found that someone wrote up the comparison as their PHD thesis (I did not read the whole thing: the author breaks Sand's influence on Eliot into literary, social, and artistic buckets).

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Is there an abstract for the thesis, or are we just not that lucky?

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Mar 3Liked by Andrew Smith

This is like every time I write an email and forget to attach the file which forms the whole subject. I definitely meant to link the abstract last time: https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/15069

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Nice, thanks!! They were twin souls separated by time and space.

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Some years back PBS had a series about the life of George Sand and her relationship with Oscar Wilde, apparently contemporaries and good friends. Impressive woman.

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Nice. This story was really new to me. I was glad to discover it!

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Not much to say- they were two artistic outsiders who found and supported each other.

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It seems that women throughout history have had to become manly to be taken seriously by historians. But society is more than just men.

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Hatshepsut is a great example, if you want to go pretty far back!

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Great article. Made me think. Of course, I knew J.k. Rowling and George Eliot were women, but I never knew till now that Isak Dinesen, the remarkable Danish writer was a woman. I was shocked. There's someone else though. Violet Paget.

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Another very good one! You always slide in with a cool answer/suggestion.

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Your best piece yet! Are the images AI? If so why are you using them? Asking for a friend 😀

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author

I'm glad you liked the piece!

The images are AI generated, and I really enjoy creating them. I feel like my pieces are considerably better with vivid images in there, and it's important to me to stay connected to my past; visual arts were a huge part of who I was growing up, and that's still true today.

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What’s the alternative? I love images but find AI imagery removes a real aspect of your story. That’s just my opinion.

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For me, there is no alternative if I want to write, publish, and create art every day. No solution is perfect, but that's the one I've settled on that feels right.

I could publish once a week and produce my own high quality images, or I could publish every day and just grab like one mediocre placeholder image from public domain, maybe. That's not really on the table for me at the moment.

If the images remove a real aspect of my story, I don't know what it is, but others will feel differently. I think it makes my place what it is, to be honest!

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Mar 2Liked by Andrew Smith

I don’t find the AI pictures remove any legitimacy from your stories. Personally, I like them and agree they enhance the story. I find myself pausing and contemplating for a moment over each, interpreting it into the imagery of the story, particularly in this story. Excellent article btw! I was not previously aware of her story and will hunt down some of her work.

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Thanks, Laura! And, that's good to hear. I sometimes spend as much time on the images as on the writing (that's rare, but it does happen). I put some thought into each image and frequently adjust whatever comes out to make it work with the story. I love the process.

And: this story is just amazing! I didn't know it before today either.

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It’s your piece and page. If you can draw and create I would love to see that too. Of course it takes time.

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I'll have to write about my old art days. I have a bunch of stuff I made decades ago that I could include in that piece! I might actually need to spread that out a little over time, make it into a series or something. One day!

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Looking forward to seeing your art!

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Mar 2Liked by Andrew Smith

I was not familiar with her story at all actually, thanks for sharing. She sounds like quite a force to be reckoned with.

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Before today, I also had not heard of her. I was going to write about something else, but Sand sort of took over!

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Mar 2Liked by Andrew Smith

Classic Sand. Gets everywhere.

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I literally have "sand" as one of the things in my idea repository.

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Mar 2Liked by Andrew Smith

I rest my case.

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author

I will also write about rest and cases, eventually.

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Would you consider Joan of Arc in the same category?

Here are some more:

Rosa Park

Marie Curie

Barack Obama

Malala Yousafzai

Harriet Tubman

Harvey Milk

Susan B. Anthony

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