Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners.

FLAUBERT, Gustave.

Item Number: 128188

London: Vizetelly & Co., 1886.

First edition in English of the author’s masterpiece. Octavo, original cloth, frontispiece and 5 plates, 2 pages of advertisements at front and 24-page publisher’s catalogue at rear dated 1886. Translated by Karl Marx’s daughter, Eleanor Marx-Aveling. In near fine condition with a touch of shelfwear. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. An exceptional example.

“Novelists should thank Gustave Flaubert the way poets thank spring: it begins with him. He is the originator of the modern novel… He began writing Madame Bovary in September 1851, and delivered the manuscript in 1856, when he was 35… No novelist agonized as much or as publicly… And no novelist reflected as self-consciously on questions of technique… Thus ‘style was born” (New York Times Book Review). Upon publication of Madame Bovary, both Flaubert and his publisher were arrested on charges of immorality and narrowly escaped conviction. Although purportedly based in part on the life of Flaubert’s friend Louise Pradier, the author’s claim that “Madame Bovary is myself,” with his unrelenting objectivity and deep compassion for his characters, identified him as the great master of the Realist school of French literature. The first edition in book form was published in France in 1857. With frontispiece, five full-page illustrations and ornamental head- and tailpieces.