George Sand is the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1803–1876). One of the most popular and renowned novelists of the European Romantic movement, she was also a prolific playwright, memoirist, journalist, and literary critic. Several volumes of her private correspondence and journals were published posthumously. Sand is perhaps best known for her pastoral novels set in the rural Berry region of central France, where she spent much of her life.