My Life, by George Sand, translated and adapted by Dan Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row $3.95

George Sand was that terrifying effigy, the "emancipated woman" who did not "know her place," a professional writer who lived by her pen, a romantic in all senses of the terms.Now, thanks to Dan Hofstadter, her inaccessible work has been elegantly and imaginatively translated in a single, eminently readable volume.