These attacks, now thought to be symptoms of epilepsy, required Flaubert to leave school and return to the provinces. Established on his estate in Croisset, he dedicated himself to his true passion—literature.

Flaubert’s convalescence was soon disrupted. His father died in January 1846, and his beloved sister, Caroline, who had recently given birth, died six weeks later. In his mid-twenties, Flaubert became head of a household that now included his mother and his sister’s daughter. Although the three lived a placid country life together for many years, Flaubert often visited Paris, where he fell in love with Louise Colet, cultivated a friendship with writer and photographer Maxime du Camp, and witnessed the Revolution of 1848. He worked for many years on a novel, The Temptation of Saint Anthony (finally published in 1874), that in its early drafts was criticized by his friends for being overly romantic.

Upon returning in 1851 from a tour of the Near East, he began a novel in which he experimented with a new narrative style. Working tirelessly for almost five years, taking great care over each sentence, Flaubert composed his masterpiece, Madame Bovary, the story of a disenchanted provincial wife. When it was published (in installments in 1856, in book form in 1857) Madame Bovary caused a sensation; its frank depiction of adultery landed Flaubert in the courts on charges of moral indecency. Exonerated, the author became a respected frequenter of the Parisian salons, was awarded the French Legion of Honor, and formed friendships with George Sand, Émile Zola, and Guy de Maupassant.

Although he continued to visit Paris frequently, Flaubert lived for most of the year in Croisset, where he wrote and revised his works, and amassed an astonishing body of correspondence. He is also remembered for his novels Salammbo (1862) and Sentimental Education (1869) and for the collection Three Stories (1877). Financial troubles beset him late in his life, and he spent his final years somewhat isolated and impoverished. Gustave Flaubert died on May 8, 1880, in Croisset.

THE WORLD OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT AND SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION


1821   Gustave Flaubert is born on December 12 in Rouen, France. His father is a surgeon and medical professor; his mother is from a distinguished provincial bourgeois family. 
1824   Flaubert’s sister, Caroline, is born. 
1829   Honoré de Balzac publishes Les Chouans, his first literary success and the earliest of his works to be included in what he later will call La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy). 
1830   Victor Hugo’s Hernani appears, as does Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black).  The July Revolution results in the abdication of King Charles X and the establishment of the “citizen king” Louis-Philippe.
1831   Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)  is published.
1832   Gustave enters school at the College Royal in Rouen; he studies the ancient Greeks and Romans, and favors such Romantic writers as Goethe, Byron, Chateaubriand, and Hugo. 
1833   George Sand’s Lelia appears. Jules Michelet publishes the first volume of his monumental Histoire de France (History of France);  the seventeen-volume work will be completed in 1867.
1836   Flaubert falls deeply in love with Elisa Schlesinger, eleven years his senior; he later will take her as his model for several of his literary heroines. 
1837   An avid writer from an early age, Flaubert publishes two stories. 
1840-1841   He begins studying law in Paris. 
1844   Flaubert has his first “nervous” attack, probably an epileptic seizure. The resulting coma and further illness cause him to abandon his legal studies for the life of a writer at his estate in Croisset, on the River Seine between Paris and Rouen. Le Comte de Monte Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo),  by Alexandre Dumas (père), is published.
1845   Flaubert completes the first version of L‘Education sentimentale (Sentimental Education).  His beloved sister, Caroline, marries.
1846   Flaubert’s father dies in January, and Caroline dies in March. Devastated, Flaubert sets up house in Croisset with his mother and Caroline’s infant daughter—a living arrangement that will persist for the next twenty-five years. During a visit to Paris, Flaubert meets the poet Louise Colet, who becomes his mistress. 
1847   Flaubert and writer and photographer Maxime du Camp take a walking tour along the River Loire and the Brittany coast. The journal Flaubert keeps during this tour will be published posthumously (1886) as Par les champs et par les grèves (Over the Fields and Over the Shores). 
1848   In Paris, Flaubert witnesses the Revolution and the establishment of the French Second Republic. After some months of political turmoil, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte is elected president. 
1849   The manuscript of La Tentation de Saint Antoine (The Temptation of Saint Anthony)  is criticized by Flaubert’s friends for its overly Romantic style. Later in the year, Flaubert journeys to the Near East with du Camp.
1850   Eugène Delacroix paints the ceiling of the Louvre’s Galerie d’Apollon (Gallery of Apollo). 
1851   Back in Croisset, Flaubert begins writing Madame Bovary—a painstaking process that will last almost five years. Gérard de Nerval’s Voyage en Orient (Voyage to the East)  is published.
1852   Having staged a coup late in 1851, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte seizes the monarchy as Napoleon III and establishes the French Second Empire. 
1853   Georges Haussmann begins redesigning the streets, parks, and other physical aspects of Paris. 
1855   Flaubert and Louise Colet end their relationship. 
1856   Late in the year, Madame Bovary appears in installments in the Revue de Paris. 
1857   Flaubert is brought to trial for the novel’s alleged moral indecency but is exonerated. Madame Bovary is published in book form. Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (Tbe Flowers of Evil)  is published; Baudelaire is tried and fined for the content of his work.
1858   A trip to Tunisia provides Flaubert with inspiration for Salammbo,  a novel about ancient Carthage.
1862  Salammbô is published. Flaubert begins to spend more time in Paris, cultivating friendships with George Sand, Émile Zola, and Ivan Turgenev. Hugo’s Les Misérables  is published.
1866   Respected by the court of Napoleon III, Flaubert is made a knight in the French Legion of Honor. 
1867   The mother of the young Guy de Maupassant is a friend of Flaubert and introduces her son to the author. 
1869  Sentimental Education  is published.
1870-1871   The Franco-Prussian War leads to the end of the French Second Empire and establishment of the Third Republic. When de Maupassant returns from military service in the war, he begins a literary apprenticeship with Flaubert, who coaches him in his writing and introduces him to other leading writers. 
1872   Flaubert’s mother dies. 
1873   Arthur Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) and Jules Verne’s Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours (Around the World in Eighty Days)  are published.
1874   The production of Flaubert’s play Le Candidat (The Candidate) is a failure. La Tentation de Saint Antoine is  published.
1877  Trois Contes (Three Stories) is published. Émile Zola’s L‘Assommoir (The Dram Shop or The Drunkard)  is published.
1880   Gustave Flaubert dies, suddenly and unexpectedly, in Croisset on May 8. 
1881   The novel Bouvard et Pecuchet,  unfinished when Flaubert died, is published.

INTRODUCTION

The year 1848 can be considered a landmark in nineteenth-century French history. It was a landmark, first, in political history.