SOURCE: "George Sand," in French Poets and Novelists, Macmillan and Co., 1878, pp. 190-236.

A highly regarded novelist, essayist, and critic, James was one of the nineteenth-century's leading proponents of realism in fiction-writing. In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in the Galaxy in 1877, he reviews Sand's literary accomplishments, praising the "facility" and "spontaneity" of her writing but criticizing her works as lacking "veracity. "

It is not the purpose of these few pages to recapitulate the various items of George Sand's biography. Many of these are to be found in L'Histoire de ma Vie, a work which, although it was thought disappointing at the time of its appearance, is well worth reading. It was given to the world day by day, as the feuilleton of a newspaper, and, like all the author's compositions, it has the stamp of being written to meet a current engagement. It lacks...