Madame Bovary
Subtitle: a story of provincial life
By: Gustave Flaubert ; translated by Alan Russell.
Edition: Reprint
Series: Penguin Classics
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1983
Place of publication: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
Language: eng
Translated from: fre
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Number of pages: 361
ISBN-13: 9780140440157
Copyright date: 1950
Work titles: Madame Bovary. 
Description: With Madame Bovary (1857) Flaubert established the realistic novel in France. Yet he always refused to ally himself with any literary movement, devoting himself in splendid isolation to his art, with that intense concern for stylistic perfection which has made him a legendary figure among novelists.

The central character of Madame Bovary is the bored wife of a provincial doctor, whose desires and illusions are inevitably shattered when reality catches up with her. Flaubert vents his profound contempt for the bourgeois mentality, but betrays a certain sympathy for the human frailty of Emma Bovary. She remains one of the great creations of modern literature.
(back cover)