Madame Bovary
By: Gustave Flaubert ; translated with an introduction and notes by Geoffrey Wall ; preface by Michèle Roberts.
Contributors: Wall, Geoffrey, 1950-
Edition: Reissued, 19th printing
Series: Penguin Classics
Publisher: Penguin Books; Penguin
Published: 2003
Place of publication: London, England
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 335
ISBN-13: 9780140449129
Copyright date: 2003
Work titles: Madame Bovary.
Description: 'Oh, why, dear God, did I marry him?'

Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent devourer of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment, and when real life continues to fail to live up to her romantic expectations, the consequences are devastating. Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert insisted: 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi.'

This modern translation by Flaubert's biographer, Geoffrey Wall, retains all the delicacy and precision of the French original. The edition also contains a preface by the novelist Michèle Roberts.
--back cover
Notes: This translation first published: 1992.

Translated from the French.