Madame Bovary Certified

Madame Bovary is one of the greatest, most beguiling novels ever written. Emma Bovary is an avid reader of sentimental novels; brought up on a Normandy farm and convent-educated, she longs for romance. At first, Emma pins her hopes on marriage, but life with her well-meaning husband in the provinces leaves her bored and dissatisfied. She seeks escape through extravagant spending sprees and, eventually, adultery. As Emma pursues her impossible reverie she seals her own ruin. ‘A great novel that is also an inexhaustible pleasure to read’ Guardian A NEW TRANSLATION BY ADAM THORPE VINTAGE FRENCH CLASSICS – six masterpieces of French fiction in collectable editions.

Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821, the son of a distinguishedsurgeon and a doctor’s daughter. After three unhappy years of studyinglaw in Paris, an epileptic attack ushered him into a life of writing. Madame Bovarywon instant acclaim upon book publication in 1857, but Flaubert’s frankdisplay of adultery in bourgeois France saw him go on trial forimmorality, only narrowly escaping conviction. Both Salammbo (1862) and The Sentimental Education (1869) were poorly received, and Flaubert’s genius was not publicly recognized until Three Tales(1877). His reputation among his fellow writers, however, was moreconstant and those who admired him included Turgenev, George Sand,Victor Hugo and Zola. Flaubert’s obsession with his art is legendary: hewould work for days on a single page, obsessively attuning sentences,seeking always le mot juste in a quest for both beauty andprecise observation. His style moved Edmund Wilson to say,’Flaubert, by asingle phrase – a notation of some commonplace object – can convey allthe poignance of human desire, the pathos of human defeat; hisdescription of some homely scene will close with a dying fall thatreminds one of great verse or music.’ Flaubert died suddenly in May1880, leaving his last work, Bouvard and Pécuchet, unfinished.