George Sand: Her Majorcan Winter of Discontent

Never before-and possibly never since-has a Mediterranean island inspired as much enmity as did the Spanish isle of Majorca for prolific French writer and protofeminist George Sand during the inhospitable winter of 1838. Her ill-fated stay there, which later became the subject of her book Winter in Majorca, was to have deleterious and far-reaching consequences for both the novelist and her famous companion, composer Fredric Chopin.

Setting foot on Majorcan soil more than a century and a half later, my visit blessedly turns up not a shred of evidence regarding the unfriendly locals, terrible...