Acclaimed literary biographer Benita Eisler sheds new light on the many roles, triumphs, and losses that together constituted George Sand's overwhelming presence. The first woman in Europe to become a best-selling novelist, Sand was the author of nearly ninety novels, twenty thousand letters, and thousands of pages of autobiographical writings and political commentary. Her fame is inseparable from her notoriety. There was the scandal of leaving her husband and children, setting up in Paris with an eighteen-year-old lover, as well as her many liaisons and friendships with men of talent and even genius: de Musset, Chopin, Balzac, and Flaubert. As Eisler reveals, hers seems like several lives--literary, political, amorous, and domestic. Naked in the Marketplace captures Sand's essence--the outsized public persona and the inner woman, along with the unique and irreplaceable role she played in the history of her times.