Author(s): Frederick Brown

Biography/Memoir

Gustave Flaubert, whose "Madame Bovary" outraged France's right-thinking bourgeoisie when it was first published in 1836, is brought to life in Frederick Brown's new biography in all his singularity and brilliance. Frederick Brown's portrayal is of an artist fraught with contradictions - his wit and bravado coexisting with great vulnerability. A sedentary man by nature, Flaubert undertook epic voyages through Egypt and the Middle East. He could be flamboyantly uncouth, but was frantically devoted to a beautifully cadenced prose. While energized by his camaraderie with male friends, who included Turgenev, the Goncourt brothers, Zola and Maupassant, he depended for emotional nurturing upon maternal women, most notably George Sand. His mistresses - French, Egyptian, and English - fed his richly erotic imagination and found their way into his fictional characters. Nineteenth-century France literally put Flaubert on trial for portraying 'lewd behaviour' in "Madame Bovary". But it also made him a celebrity and, indirectly, brought about his financial ruin, probably hastening his sudden death at the age of fifty-nine.