Gustave Flaubert

    This is the story of two Chaplinesque copy-clerks who meet on a park bench in Paris. Following an unexpected inheritance, they decide to give up their jobs and explore the world of ideas. This edition includes the Dictionary of Received Ideas.

    Gustave Flaubert blends the scenery of revolutionary France, satire, and a forbidden love story with a young man in personal turmoil as he attempts to reach the upper levels of society. Frederic Moreau, a law student, falls into secret, passionate love with Madame Arnoux, a slender, dark woman several years older than himself. Befriending her husband in order to stay close to Madame Arnoux, Moreau meanwhile squanders his fortune on women, wine, and song in the attempt to achieve the life of ease.

    A book that deeply influenced the young Freud and was the inspiration for many artists, The Temptation of Saint Anthony was Flaubert’s lifelong work, thirty years in the making. Based on the story of the third-century saint who lived on an isolated mountaintop in the Egyptian desert, it is a fantastical rendering of one night during which Anthony is besieged by carnal temptations and philosophical doubt.

    This Modern Library Paperback Classic reproduces the distinguished Lafcadio Hearn translation, which translator Richard Sieburth calls “a splendid period piece from one of America’s premier translators of nineteenth-century French prose. In Lafcadio Hearn’s Latinate rendering, Flaubert’s experimental drama of the modern consciousness reads as weirdly as its oneiric original.”

    One of the world’s most celebrated novels, soon to be a major motion picture starring Mia Wasikowska

    This indelible portrait of a beautiful woman’s aching lust for more—more romance, more glamour, more fun—and her resulting tragic demise, is widely considered one of the finest novels ever written. Flaubert’s refusal to condemn his adulterous heroine, a woman trapped as much by circumstance as by her own boundless desires, scandalized nineteenth-century France and resulted in a trial on charges of obscenity. But it is the beauty of the novel’s prose, the great care it takes with characters major and minor, and the relentless but elegant thrust of its narrative, that puts Madame Bovary in a class by itself.

    In the story of a provincial doctor and his wife’s tawdry affairs, Gustave Flaubert found the stuff of great literature. A perfect novel about imperfect people, Madame Bovary is the rare classic that exceeds expectations and feels as fresh now as it did the day it was written.

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    A critical masterpiece, Madame Bovary is the story of Emma Bovary’s search for passion and the consequences that follow. While deeply loved by her husband Charles, Emma is unhappy with the banality of her provincial life, and seeks excitement in infidelity and living beyond her means. Left brokenhearted and penniless, the truth of Emma’s life ultimately destroys her and her family.

    Reflecting on the bourgeoisie of France in the early nineteenth century, Madame Bovary is Flaubert’s commentary on the wealthy’s romantic delusions and the impact such delusions have on the lives of everyone involved. Upon the publication of Madame Bovary in 1856 Gustave Flaubert was prosecuted for obscenity and offending public morals. In 1857 he was acquitted, and, aided by the publicity from the trial, Madame Bovary became a bestseller. It has been adapted for film, television, and theatre, including two adaptions in 2014—Madame Bovary starring Mia Wasikowska and Paul Giamatti, and Gemma Bovery starring Gemma Arterton.

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