A handful of novels that took upwards of five years each to write, the last of them left unfinished; a slim volume of short stories; tens of thousands of pages of notes, jottings and unfinished drafts; a large body of early works left unpublished during his lifetime; a massive correspondence that some (including Gide, who kept it at his bedside table in place of the Bible) see as his masterpiece; and an existence spent, for the most part, in the quiet seclusion of a large family house on the banks of the Seine near Rouen. The life and work of Flaubert can be summarized in relatively few words. Yet the “hermit of Croisset”, as he became known, occupies a unique place in literary history – and not only because of the famous trial in 1857 following the publication of

Madame Bovary

,…

3115 words

Citation: Unwin, Tim. "Gustave Flaubert". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 October 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1555, accessed 19 March 2024.]

1555 Gustave Flaubert 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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