Common Prayer

'Sand seems as alive as if she had just walked out of the room... quietly witty... fascinating' The Times<BR><BR>'Thought-provoking... written with energy, passion and commitment to its fascinating subject' Literary Review<BR><BR>My friends will respect me, I hope, just as much under my jacket as under my dress... So take me for a man or a woman as you wish.<BR><BR>By the age of thirty, the novelist who had been born Aurore Dupin in 1804 had become the internationally renowned George Sand. In English, her daring literary experiments were out-selling even Victor Hugo. But the legend of Sand herself scandalised Paris. Not only prodigiously talented but cigar-smoking, cross-dressing and promiscuous, she seemed to break all the rules society set for women.<BR><BR>What can we learn from the way she lived? Was her iconoclasm simply an act of courage, a declaration of absolute autonomy? Or did her emotional and creative relationships with many of the leading figures of her day - from Fryderyk Chopin to Gustave Flaubert, and Alfred de Musset to Eugène Delacroix - form part of her dialogue with the world around her: a dialogue that is intrinsic to writing itself?<BR><BR>In Becoming George, award-winning poet and biographer Fiona Sampson rehabilitates Sand as an intellectual and artistic giant, the beating heart of French literature in the nineteenth century. Too often underestimated in the century and a half since her death, she speaks to us today - about ecology, politics, society, gender - with brilliant prescience; a figure ahead of her time.<BR><BR>Longlisted for the American Library in Paris Award 2026<BR><BR><BR>Praise for Fiona Sampson:<BR><BR>'Fiona Sampson beautifully describes the "self-invention" of George Sand, the Romantic period's most famous woman writer, and in the process paints a vivid portrait of a world in the throes of political and artistic revolution.' Maurice Samuels, Professor of French, Yale University<BR><BR>'Fiona Sampson is a sleuth of a biographer ... rarely has my jaw dropped on so many occasions while reading a biography.' Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Daily Mail on In Search of Mary Shelley<BR><BR>'Brilliant, heart-stopping ... reads like a thriller, a memoir and a provocative piece of literary fiction all at the same time ... magical and compelling.' Charlotte Gordon, Washington Post on Two Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning<BR><BR>'If we get another literary biography [this year] as astute and feelingful as this one, we shall be lucky.' John Carey, The Sunday Times on In Search of Mary Shelley

Limestone Country is a perceptive, lyrical evocation and investigation into four landscapes in Europe and beyond. Seemingly disparate these places are bound together by their limestone geology, by personal experience and Fiona Sampson's unique imagination. Limestone Country delves deep into the heart of these landscapes: the people, wildlife and culture, told through vivid snapshots of daily life, farming routines and encounters with the wild. It is a meditation on the meaning of place, how we shape it and how it shapes us.

'A nourishing, occasionally provoking hybrid of group biography, cultural criticism and travelogue that seeks to restore to Romanticism its radicalism, and also show just how much the countryside shaped its manifesto' Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday For the Romantics, the countryside was a place of radical change. But those real life experiences have been overlaid by two centuries of cliché. To rediscover - and learn from - their radicalism we need to find a fresh approach.In this extraordinary hybrid of scholarship, biography, cultural history, travelogue and lifewriting, acclaimed poet and Romantic biographer Fiona Sampson does just that. As she walks the British countryside, from the Isle of Wight to Kintyre, her evocative and thought-provoking book helps us see clearly what's hiding in plain sight.'"Romanticism isn't a cultural artefact," [Sampson] writes. "It's a way for thought to move." She is taking her own mind for a walk and [. . .] the essence is intellectual and fully freighted . . . shifting, subtle and demanding' Guardian'Constantly stimulating ' Suzi Feay, London Magazine