Character Catalog

A founding novel of literary realism, telling the life and lost illusions of Emma Bovary, wife of a Norman country doctor. The work was the subject of a landmark trial for offending public morality.

A historical novel set in Carthage in the 3rd century BC, during the Mercenary War. Flaubert travelled to Tunis to research this epic and colourful fresco.

A great novel of disillusionment, tracing the life of Frédéric Moreau and his generation in 1840s Paris, against the backdrop of the 1848 revolution. Poorly received on publication, it is today considered a masterpiece.

A philosophical and visionary work on which Flaubert laboured for nearly twenty-five years, depicting the temptations and hallucinations of the hermit Saint Anthony in the desert.

A collection of three stories — A Simple Heart, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, and Herodias — considered a pinnacle of Flaubert's narrative art for its concision and stylistic perfection.

An unfinished satirical novel about two clerks who attempt to master all fields of human knowledge and systematically fail. Flaubert was working on it at the time of his death, the culmination of his critique of human stupidity.

A satirical collection of bourgeois commonplaces and clichés, compiled by Flaubert throughout his life, conceived as an appendix to Bouvard and Pécuchet.

The author, in his work, must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

What seems beautiful to me, what I would like to do, is a book about nothing, a book with no external attachment, which would hold itself together by the inner force of its style.

Art without rules is no longer art; it is like a woman who would shed all clothing. To impose on the novel the sole rule of public decency is not to subjugate it, it is to honor it.

I am turning into a sentimental old fool. Everything wounds me, everything tears me apart, and I stay silent, making efforts to hide this universal softening.

Family estate on the banks of the Seine, near Rouen, where Flaubert lived and worked for most of his life. It was in his study overlooking the river that he wrote almost his entire body of work.

Hospital where Flaubert was born and where his father served as chief surgeon. The child grew up in the adjoining official residence, exposed to illness and death from his earliest years.

Flaubert regularly stayed in Paris to frequent literary circles. There he met with his writer friends such as George Sand, Turgenev, and the Goncourt brothers at celebrated dinner gatherings.

Norman seaside resort where Flaubert, as a teenager, met Élisa Schlésinger in 1836, an impossible love that marked his entire life and inspired Sentimental Education.

During his journey to the Orient (1849–1851), Flaubert travelled through Egypt, an experience that fed his imagination and provided the material for Salammbô and The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

Flaubert smoked heavily while working. He had brought back several pipes from his travels in the Orient, which he used during his long writing sessions.

The writer's daily working tools, worn by the countless crossings-out and rewritings that characterized his creative process.

Flaubert kept his many drafts, bearing witness to his painstaking work on style. The pages were covered in corrections, additions, and deletions.

A common domestic object in his study at Croisset, where he often worked at night, wrapped in his dressing gown, battling the Norman cold.

Flaubert's iconic garment, which he wore during his long nocturnal writing sessions in his study overlooking the Seine.

Flaubert accumulated considerable documentation for each novel. For Bouvard et Pécuchet, he is said to have read more than 1,500 works.