Flaubert: A Biography » (Bargain)

Frederick Brown is Professor Emeritus at the Department of European Languages and Literatures, the State University of New York at Stonybrook. He is the author of the classic biography of Zola.

From the highly acclaimed author of Zola: A Life comes the definitive biography of Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary.Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), whose Madame Bovary outraged the right-thinking bourgeoisie, is now brought to life as the singular person and artist he was. As Frederick Brown reveals, Flaubert was fraught with contradiction—a sedentary man who took epic voyages through Egypt and the Middle East; a man of genius who could be flamboyantly uncouth, but was fanatically devoted to beautifully cadenced prose. While making much of his camaraderie with male friends, Flaubert depended upon the emotional nurture of maternal women, notably George Sand, with whom he engaged in a justly celebrated correspondence. His assorted mistresses—French, Egyptian, and English—fed both his richly erotic imagination and his fictional characters, and his letters provide a record of them.Flaubert's time and place literally put him on trial for portraying lewd behavior in Madame Bovary. His milieu also made him a celebrity and, indirectly, brought about his financial ruin. Flaubert died suddenly at the age of fifty-nine, and soon afterward, his beloved retreat near Rouen was torn down and converted into a distillery to cover his niece's debts. He privately dreamed of popular success, which he in fact achieved with Madame Bovary, but never sacrificed to it his ideal of artistic integrity. Frederick Brown's magisterial biography honors his subject's life, times, and legacy.

The New York Times - William Grimes

Mr. Brown makes the most of his few narrative opportunities. He gives a spirited account of Flaubert's tour of the Near East with his friend Maxime du Camp, a riot of exotic color and nonstop sex. He also mines gold in Flaubert's tempestuous relationship with Colet, a writer and the paramour of several famous writers, whose sense of personal drama and colossal self-absorption made her a worthy match for the man she would later call "that insidious Norman."

Prologue: Rouen     3
The Surgeon at the Hotel-Dieu     9
The Cynosure of All Eyes     23
School Days     42
Stories and Histories     54
First Love     73
The Grand Tour     97
A Fortunate Fall     116
Deaths in the Family     143
Louis, Louise, and Max     173
1848     204
Voyage en Orient: Egypt     231
Voyage en Orient: After Egypt     257
The Perfect Hostages     272
Madame Bovary     286
On Trial     315
An Island of His Own     334
Entering Middle Age     372
Imperial Society     392
L'Education sentimentale     420
War Years     443
Orphanhood     465
"We are all of us emigres, left over from another age."     483
A Fruitful Intermission     513
The Unraveling     537
Epilogue     560
Acknowledgments     571
Notes     573
Selected Bibliography     599
Index     609