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Gustave Flaubert's «Madame Bovary» is the classic tale of its title character, Emma Bovary, the wife of a doctor, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of her everyday life. Heralded as a seminal work of Realism, «Madame Bovary» is considered by many as one of the greatest novels ever written. Attacked for obscenity when it first appeared in Paris in 1856, «Madame Bovary» was an instant success for the author. His quest for literary perfectionism can be seen in this work, his masterpiece, as his craft for writing is greatly exemplified.

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Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was a French novelist and short story writer who is counted among the greatest Western writers. Flaubert was considered to be a master of style, obsessively devoted to finding the right word («le mot juste»), in every piece of literature he produced. Solitary by nature and not of a happy temperament, Flaubert became absorbed with literature and history and early became aware of his vocation as a writer. He is known especially for his first published novel, «Madame Bovary» (1857). «The Temptation of Saint Anthony» is a book which the French author spent practically his whole life restlessly working on before publishing the final version in 1874. The story was based on the 4th century Christian anchorite, Saint Anthony the Great, who lived in the Egyptian desert and experienced philosophical and physical temptations. Its fantastic style and setting were inspired by the Brueghel painting which he saw at the Balbi Palace in Genoa.

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Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist and short story writer, was considered to be a master of style, obsessively devoted to finding the right word («le mot juste»), in every piece of literature he produced. As a child he expressed great imagination and took in all the stories he could from his nurse and neighbors, and in doing so, he prepared himself for a life consumed by literature and history. In addition to his «Madame Bovary», his first published novel and the one considered to be his masterpiece, Flaubert is remembered for his great historical romance, «Salammbô». This novel draws largely from Book I of Polybius' «Histories», and combines the history of the First Punic War and the mythology of ancient Carthage in a fashion that has never been equaled. Flaubert sealed his reputation with the publication of this sophisticated novel in 1862, as audiences were entranced with its lush and brilliantly detailed descriptions of a little-known, but fascinating, period of history.

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First published in 1869, this deliberately written work follows the ambitions and whims of the young Frédéric Moreau as he travels from his provincial hometown to the enticing metropolis of Paris. Though he survived the Revolution of 1848, Moreau is still prone to all the mistakes and petty concerns of a young man of the middle class: he develops an infatuation for a married woman, Madame Arnoux, and falls in and out of love with her throughout the novel; his ambitious endeavors soon bore him and leave him with Parisian ennui; and, despite the founding of the Second French Empire, Moreau is disappointed by the lack of social progress around him. Through all of this disillusionment, the author makes it very clear that he saw his generation as one without true passion or genuine feeling, utilizing irony and pessimism to underscore the mood of that social and political time in the history of France. The last work of Flaubert published in his lifetime, “Sentimental Education” has since been hailed as one of the most influential novels of the 19th century. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” is the classic tale of its title character, Emma Bovary, the second wife of Charles Bovary, a well meaning yet plodding and clumsy doctor. Emma is an educated young woman who longs for the luxury and romance that she reads about in the popular novels of the day. When the two attend an elegant ball given by the Marquis d’Andervilliers, her longing for something more than the dullness provided by her own marriage can no longer be contained. In order to escape the banalities and emptiness of her everyday life a series of adulterous affairs ensue. “Madame Bovary” is considered by many as one of the greatest novels ever written. Although it was attacked for obscenity when it first appeared in Paris in 1856, “Madame Bovary” became an instant success for the author. Flaubert’s quest for literary perfection is greatly exemplified in the craft of this work, which has been heralded as a seminal work of literary realism. This edition follows the translation of Eleanor Marx-Aveling, includes an introduction by Ferdinand Brunetière, and a biographical afterword.

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French novelist and short story writer, Gustave Flaubert, was considered to be a master of style, obsessively devoted to finding the right word in every piece of literature he produced. As a child he expressed great imagination and took in all the stories he could from his nurse and neighbors, and in doing so, he prepared himself for a life consumed by literature and history. In addition to his “Madame Bovary”, his first published novel and the one considered to be his masterpiece, Flaubert is remembered for his great historical romance, “Salammbô”. This novel draws largely from Book I of Polybius’ “Histories”, and combines the history of the First Punic War and the mythology of ancient Carthage in a fashion that has never been equaled. Flaubert sealed his reputation with the publication of this sophisticated novel in 1862, as audiences were entranced with its lush and brilliantly detailed descriptions of a little-known, but fascinating, period of history. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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"I want to write the moral history of the men of my generation—or, more accurately, the history of their feelings," declared Gustave Flaubert, who envisioned «a book about love, about passion; but passion such as can exist nowadays—that is to say, inactive.» First published in 1869, this novel fulfills Flaubert's conception with a realistic, ironic portrait of bourgeois lives played out against France's tumultuous revolution of 1848 and the founding of its Second Empire.Frédéric Moreau, a law student in Paris, dreams of achieving success in art, business, journalism, and politics. His aspirations take a romantic turn upon a chance encounter with a married woman, who inspires a lifelong obsession. Frédéric befriends his idol's husband, an influential art dealer, and quickly finds himself seduced by society life—and bedeviled by financial problems, ideological conflicts, and betrayals of trust. Blending romance, historical authenticity, and satire, Flaubert's Sentimental Education ranks among the nineteenth century's great novels.

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At convent school, a girl acquires romantic notions of a lover who will live for her alone. She marries a kind but dull country doctor and discovers that «This life of hers was as cold as an attic that looks north; and boredom, quiet as the spider, was spinning its web in the shadowy places of her heart.» Emma Bovary's quest for escape from the emptiness of her bourgeois existence leads to infidelity and financial extravagance, and Gustave Flaubert's powerful and deeply moving examination of her moral degeneration is universally regarded as a landmark of nineteenth-century fiction.<BR>Flaubert was brought to trial by the French government on the grounds of this novel's alleged immorality but narrowly escaped conviction. <I>Madame Bovary</I> remains a touchstone for literary discussions of provincial life and adultery as well as a summit of prose art, a pioneering work of realism that forever changed the way novels are written. This complete and unabridged edition features the classic translation by Eleanor Marx-Aveling.

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The last work written by Flaubert that was not quite complete by his death in 1880, «Bouvard and Pecuchet» is his characteristically satirical work revolving around two Parisian copy-clerks. Though they meet on a park bench in the middle of a hot summer day, their friendship grows to a remarkable degree, so much so that when one receives an unexpected inheritance, they both decide to dedicate themselves to the exploration of ideas in the countryside. What follows is an episodic, picaresque-like pursuit of various subjects, in which Bouvard and Pecuchet are repeatedly disappointed. After the initial grief of each endeavor they move on to the next, demonstrating to perfection the weaknesses Flaubert himself saw in the sciences and arts of his day. Perpetual beginners who obtain no true achievement, even after years have elapsed, the tension builds in both their failing explorations and in their relations with the local villagers. Interwoven with the taut political situation of the nineteenth century, this work finally comes full circle when Bouvard and Pecuchet decide to return to the world of copying. Written with great deliberation in the hopes of creating his masterpiece, Flaubert poured all of his best writing into the remarkable and revealing «Bouvard and Pecuchet.»

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Based on the classic novel by Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary tells the tale of Emma Bovary, who is romantic by nature, and believes herself the equal of the heroines depicted in the romantic novels she reads. When she moves to a rural town in France, she finds herself utterly bored by country and small-town life. Although her husband is a good man, Emma has no respect for him. Eventually she takes a lover, and wants him to give up everything for her, so they can run away together–but he fails to appear on the day set for their elopement. She then finds solace in the arms of a third man, but when this affair also collapses, she has nothing left to live for. A great tragedy of French life and customs, effectively dramatized by Gaston Baty!

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