Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary is one of the greatest, most beguiling novels ever written.

Emma Bovary is an avid reader of sentimental novels; brought up on a Normandy farm and convent-educated, she longs for romance. At first, Emma pins her hopes on marriage, but life with her well-meaning husband in the provinces leaves her bored and dissatisfied. She seeks escape through extravagant spending sprees and, eventually, adultery. As Emma pursues her impossible reverie she seals her own ruin.

'A great novel that is also an inexhaustible pleasure to read' Guardian

A NEW TRANSLATION BY ADAM THORPE

VINTAGE FRENCH CLASSICS - six masterpieces of French fiction in collectable editions.

A work of brilliance * Daily Mail *

Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821, the son of a distinguished surgeon and a doctor's daughter. After three unhappy years of studying law in Paris, an epileptic attack ushered him into a life of writing. Madame Bovary won instant acclaim upon book publication in 1857, but Flaubert's frank display of adultery in bourgeois France saw him go on trial for immorality, only narrowly escaping conviction. Both Salammbo (1862) and The Sentimental Education (1869) were poorly received, and Flaubert's genius was not publicly recognized until Three Tales (1877). His reputation among his fellow writers, however, was more constant and those who admired him included Turgenev, George Sand, Victor Hugo and Zola. Flaubert's obsession with his art is legendary: he would work for days on a single page, obsessively attuning sentences, seeking always le mot juste in a quest for both beauty and precise observation. His style moved Edmund Wilson to say,'Flaubert, by a single phrase - a notation of some commonplace object - can convey all the poignance of human desire, the pathos of human defeat; his description of some homely scene will close with a dying fall that reminds one of great verse or music.' Flaubert died suddenly in May 1880, leaving his last work, Bouvard and Pécuchet, unfinished.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781784878450
ISBN 10	1784878456
Title	Madame Bovary
Author	Gustave Flaubert
Series	French Vintage Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Vintage Publishing
Year published	2023-07-06
Number of pages	432
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.