Flaubert: A Biography - Hardcover

Brown, Frederick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316118788 ISBN 13: 9780316118781

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2006

Synopsis

From the highly acclaimed author of Zola: A Life comes the definitive biography of Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary.Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), whose Madame Bovary outraged the right-thinking bourgeoisie, is now brought to life as the singular person and artist he was. As Frederick Brown reveals, Flaubert was fraught with contradiction--a sedentary man who took epic voyages through Egypt and the Middle East; a man of genius who could be flamboyantly uncouth, but was fanatically devoted to beautifully cadenced prose. While making much of his camaraderie with male friends, Flaubert depended upon the emotional nurture of maternal women, notably George Sand, with whom he engaged in a justly celebrated correspondence. His assorted mistresses--French, Egyptian, and English--fed both his richly erotic imagination and his fictional characters, and his letters provide a record of them.Flaubert's time and place literally put him on trial for portraying lewd behavior in Madame Bovary. His milieu also made him a celebrity and, indirectly, brought about his financial ruin. Flaubert died suddenly at the age of fifty-nine, and soon afterward, his beloved retreat near Rouen was torn down and converted into a distillery to cover his niece's debts. He privately dreamed of popular success, which he in fact achieved with Madame Bovary, but never sacrificed to it his ideal of artistic integrity. Frederick Brown's magisterial biography honors his subject's life, times, and legacy.

About this title

About the Author:

Frederick Brown is the author of An Impersonation of Angels: A Biography of Jean Cocteau; Père-Lachaise, Theater and Revolution; and Zola: A Life. Twice the recipient of both Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, he lives in New York City.

Review:

[A] superb, full-length portrait...Flaubert is a superb biography, not least because it gives us the portrait of a man embedded in his country and his age even as he rebels against its values and mores. Brown is masterly at drawing the background to his subject, social and political, writing with authority and an eye for the telling detail that compel fascination as well as respect. (Caroline Moore The Spectator 2006-06-03)

At last, a biography commensurate with the outsize personality and genius of Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880). Brown, author of an acclaimed biography of Zola, offers a tantalizing, penetrating study that embeds the author of Madame Bovary in his time and place: a tumultuous Paris during the revolution of 1848 and the period of expansion and greed known as the Second Empire...Rich, full of passion and tragedy, overflowing with keenly portrayed characters, this superb biography gives us an unforgettable portrait of a literary master: exuberant yet anxious, brilliant yet full of self-doubt, a man who best savored the women he loved in their absence, an artist who claimed to scorn fame but reveled in it once achieved, who couldn't bear loss but whose life was sadly filled with it. (Publishers Weekly 2006-03-13)

One of the virtues of Frederick Brown's quietly persuasive biography is its careful documentation of Flaubert's always agonized search for a literary idea to match his aesthetic ideals. Another is its sensitivity to the complexities of his artistic personality...[Brown] has put together a judicious work that sticks to the record and relies on expertly chosen passages from Flaubert's brilliant letters and the works of his contemporaries to develop a convincing portrait, brushstroke by brushstroke. (William Grimes New York Times 2006-04-12)

Brown is no slouch himself when it comes to research. His new biography of Flaubert is almost as much a cultural history of France in the mid-19th century as it is a life of the author...But however fascinating the world in which he moved, Flaubert doesn't get lost in his own biography. He emerges from the pages of Brown's book as a wonderfully complex blend of the passionate and the persnickety--or as Brown puts it, 'glorifying unruly, sociopathic, large-lunged genius or fussing over stylistic minutiae as obsessively as a Byzantine grammarian.'...He paints a rich portrait of Flaubert's circle of friends and acquaintances, a who's who of 19th-century French writers that includes Zola, the Goncourt brothers, Guy de Maupassant, Théophile Gautier and Charles Sainte-Beuve. But best of all, he gives us Flaubert and his world in all their grand, complicated messiness, the better to appreciate the skill with which Flaubert brought literary order out of the chaos of existence. (Charles Matthews Houston Chronicle 2006-04-02)

Frederick Brown's Flaubert is both valuable and fascinating...Brown provides an exemplary biography, brilliantly detailed and exhaustively researched. Particularly impressive is Brown's ability to convey a welter of intriguing facts eloquently and articulately...Equally impressive are Brown's brilliant analyses of particular scenes from the novel. He is a superb literary analyst and critic. His thoroughness, articulateness and critical mastery combine to make this work at once a remarkably informative and brilliantly incisive portrait of a man and his era. (Jamie Spencer St. Louis Post-Dispatch 2006-04-23)

A beautifully written book with the kind of commitment to Flaubertian detail that few fiction writers achieve, let alone biographers...[A] delightfully overwhelming biography...[Brown's] lucid histories and deeply detailed psychological construction of a literary giant are deserving of the widest audience. (Brad Quinn Daily Yomiuri 2006-07-15)

The most immediate effect of Brown's book is an urgent desire to read absolutely everything Flaubert published...Biographers are handmaids in the literary world, and since Brown's book will win Flaubert many new or returning readers, it is, for this reason alone, a resounding success...Brown's biography [is] funny, racy, gossipy and erudite by turns. (Ruth Scurr Daily Telegraph 2006-06-03)

[A] wonderfully rich and enjoyable book...There have, of course, been biographies of Flaubert before...and, if Frederick Brown's account can add only a small amount to the record, it offers a new richness of context. Showing a positively Flaubertian diligence of research, he has woven his subject into the fustian of his times--literary, social and political. The vicissitudes of French public life from the Revolution of 1848 to the Paris Commune are lucidly laid out. (Matthew Sturgis Sunday Telegraph 2006-06-04)

[A] massive and authoritative biography. (Andrew Crumley Scotland on Sunday 2006-06-04)

[A] splendid new biography...[A] vigorously researched, intellectually nuanced, and exquisitely written book...[A] remarkable book. (Christopher Benfey New Republic 2006-05-22)

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0316118788
• ISBN 13: 9780316118781
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 640