Flaubert

(Gustave), French novelist, b. Rouen, 12 Dec. 1821. The son of a distinguished surgeon, he abandoned his father’s profe ion for literature. His masterpiece, Madame Bovary , published in ’56 in the Revue de Paris , drew a prosecution upon that journal which ended in a triumph for the author. For his next great work, Salammbô , ’62, an epic of Carthage, he prepared himself by long antiquarian studies. His intellectual tendencies are displayed in The Temptation of Saint Anthony . He stands eminent among the naturalist school for his artistic fidelity. He was a friend of Théophile Gautier, Ivan Turgenev, Emile Zola and “George Sand.” His correspondence with the last of these has been published. He distinctly states therein that on subjects like immortality men cheat themselves with words. Died at Rouen, 9 May, 1880.