Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary put its author in a Paris courtroom. Serialised in the Revue de Paris in 1856, the novel earned Gustave Flaubert a prosecution for offending public morals and religion; he was acquitted in February 1857 and the book sold hard on the scandal. Born in Rouen in 1821, son of the chief surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu, he spent most of his working life at the family house at Croisset on the Seine, reading his sentences aloud until the rhythm satisfied him. Salammbô (1862) followed years of study and a journey to Tunisia for its ancient Carthage. Sentimental Education (1869) traced a provincial young man's stalled ambitions through the revolution of 1848, while The Temptation of St. Antony grew from drafts begun in 1849 and reached print in its third version in 1874. A Simple Soul, the story of the servant Félicité and her parrot, comes from Three Tales (1877), the last book he finished; English collections such as The Short Fiction of Gustave Flaubert set it beside his other short pieces. He died at Croisset in 1880, aged 58.