He did however make occasional visits to Paris and England, where he apparently had a mistress. After leaving Paris, he returned to Croisset, near the Seine, close to Rouen, and lived there for the rest of his life. In 1846, after an attack of epilepsy, he left Paris and abandoned the study of law.įrom 1846 to 1854, Flaubert had a relationship with the poet Louise Colet his letters to her have survived. Toward the end of 1840, he travelled in the Pyrenees and Corsica. He made a few acquaintances, including Victor Hugo. In Paris, he was an indifferent student and found the city distasteful. He was educated at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen, and did not leave until 1840, whereby he went to Paris to study law. He began writing at an early age, as early as eight according to some sources. He was the second son of Anne Justine Caroline (née Fleuriot 1793–1872) and Achille-Cléophas Flaubert (1784–1846), director and senior surgeon of the major hospital in Rouen. Life Early life and education įlaubert was born in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy, in northern France. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert. He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, 'in Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality'. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. Gustave Flaubert ( UK: / ˈ f l oʊ b ɛər/ FLOH-bair, US: / f l oʊ ˈ b ɛər/ floh- BAIR, French: 12 December 1821 – ) was a French novelist. Croisset ( Canteleu), Rouen, French Third Republic

Flaubert novels