About the Author

Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821, the son of a prominent physician. The success of Madame Bovary (1857) was ensured by government prosecution for "immorality"; Salammb (1862) and The Sentimental Education (1869) received a cool public reception; not until the publication of Three Tales (1877) was his genius popularly acknowledged. His final bitterness and disillusion were vividly evidenced in the savagely satiric Bouvard and Pecuchet, left unfinished at his death in 1880.