August: break with Louise Colet. September: finishes first version of Saint Antoine. October: embarks with Du Camp on eighteen-month tour of the Orient.

1850 February: voyage up the Nile. May: crossing the desert by camel. August: death of Balzac; Flaubert and Du Camp arrive in Jerusalem. September: plan for journey to Persia abandoned; the travellers turn west. October: Rhodes. November: Constantinople. December: Athens.

1851 April: Flaubert in Rome; Du Camp returns to Paris. May: Flaubert arrives home in Croisset; resumes relations with Louise Colet. September: begins writing Madame Bovary.

1852 January: Du Camp awarded Legion d‘honneur. September: Du Camp becomes editor of the Revue de Paris.

1853 September: death of père Parain, a favourite uncle.

1854 October: final break with Louise Colet.

1855 October: takes rooms in Paris.

1856 April: finishes Madame Bovary. May: rewriting Saint Antoine. October: first instalment of Madame Bovary published in Revue de Paris.

1857 January: Flaubert prosecuted for publishing an immoral book. February: Bovary trial ends in acquittal. April: Madame Bovary published in book form. October: begins work on Salammbô.

1858 April–June: visits Carthage and North Africa, site of Salammbô.

1862 February: finishes Salammbô. November: Salammbô published.

1863 January: first letter to George Sand. February: first meeting with Turgenev.

1864 January: niece Caroline engaged to Ernest Commainville. May: begins work on new version of L'Education sentimentale. November: first visit to Compiègne as guest of the Emperor.

1866 August: nominated Chevalier de la Légion d‘honneur. November: George Sand's first visit to Croisset.

1868 May: George Sand staying in Croisset.

1869 May: finishes L'Education sentimentale. July: death of Louis Bouilhet. November: publication of L'Education sentimentale. December: spends Christmas with George Sand in Nohant.

1870 August: beginning of Franco-Prussian war. December: victorious German troops arrive in Rouen.

1871 January: armistice signed with Prussia. May: insurrection in Paris. July: German troops leave Rouen.

1872 April: death of Flaubert's mother. June: finishes final version of Saint Antoine.

1874 March: Saint Antoine published. August: begins writing Bouvard et Pécuchet.

1875 Bad health and financial problems.