A Simple Heart.

FLAUBERT, Gustave.

$750.00

Item Number: 139337

Paris: Societe des Beaux Arts, n.d. [ca. 1895].

The limited Salon edition of Flaubert’s classic novella. Octavo, bound in three quarters morocco over marbled boards, gilt titles and elaborate gilt tooling with red morocco onlays to the spine in five compartments within raised gilt bands, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt with others untrimmed, with tissue-guarded illustrations by Emile Adan. Limited to five hundred and fifty numbered copies, this is number 152. Preface by A. de Claye. In near fine condition with rubbing to the extremities.

The leading exponent of literary realism, French novelist Gustave Flaubert is especially known for his debut novel Madame Bovary. Flaubert believed in the principle of finding "le mot juste" ("the right word"), which he considered the key to achieving quality in literary art. He famously avoided the inexact and the abstract and renounced the cliché. Flaubert published much less prolifically than was the norm for his time due to his painstaking style but exercised an extraordinary influence on members of various schools including Kafka, Nabokov, Guy de Maupassant, Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet, and Zola.