Gustave Flaubert - Collected Works, incl. Madame Bovary (48 books...

* Gustave Flaubert - Collected Works, incl. Madame Bovary (48 books)

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT (1821–1880) was a French novelist and one of the most influential figures in Western literature, celebrated for his fierce dedication to realism and his relentless pursuit of "le mot juste"—the right word. He famously avoided the inexact, the abstract and the vaguely inapt expression, and scrupulously eschewed the cliché. He worked in sullen solitude, sometimes occupying a week in the completion of one page, never satisfied with what he had composed.

His earliest works captured the intense emotions of late Romanticism before he transitioned into the objective, detached style that defined modern fiction. These EARLY WRITINGS , translated by Robert Griffin in 1991, reveal the young writer working toward more complex tableaux, increasingly preoccupied with the tension between language and art, medium and ideal. It includes his autobiographical novella, MEMOIRS OF A MADMAN (1838), which offers an intimate glimpse into his youthful passions and psychological development, laying the thematic groundwork for his later, more mature investigations into human disillusionment.

Flaubert achieved instant notoriety and literary immortality with the publication of MADAME BOVARY (1857). The novel, which led to a famous public trial for obscenity, details the tragic downfall of Emma Bovary, a provincial woman seeking escape from her mundane life through romantic fantasies and ruinous love affairs. Henry James said the book "has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment." He shifted gears drastically for his next major project, SALAMMBÔ (1862), an opulent historical novel set in ancient Carthage after the First Punic War. Flaubert then returned to contemporary French society with SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION (1869), a sweeping narrative that is considered one of the most influential novels of the 19th century. It chronicles the passive life of Frédéric Moreau against the backdrop of the European Revolutions of 1848, capturing the collective disillusionment of an entire generation. THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTHONY (1874) is a dramatic poem in prose (or a dramatic novel) on which he spent his whole adult life fitfully working. It takes as its subject the famous temptations faced by Saint Anthony the Great, in the Egyptian desert.

In his later years, Flaubert demonstrated his mastery across shorter and more experimental formats. His collection THREE TALES (1877) contains three distinct stories—"A Simple Heart," "Saint Julian the Hospitalier," and "Herodias"—that showcase his stylistic versatility, moving seamlessly from the quiet grief of a modern servant to medieval hagiography and ancient biblical drama. His final narrative project, BOUVARD AND PÉCUCHET (1881), published posthumously, is a satirical encyclopedia of human stupidity following two copy clerks who attempt, and disastrously fail, to master every branch of human knowledge.

Beyond his fiction, Flaubert was a prolific and brilliant correspondent. His vast epistolary legacy is beautifully preserved in the acclaimed two-volume edition of his LETTERS translated by Francis Steegmuller (1980–1982), which provides English readers with an intimate look at his grueling writing process. His specific correspondences, notably the compiled Flaubert-Turgenev letters (1985) and Flaubert-Sand letters (1993), reveal rich intellectual dialogues with his contemporaries George Sand and Ivan Turgenev, cementing his reputation not just as a solitary craftsman, but as a vital node in the nineteenth-century international republic of letters.


The following books are in ePUB and/or PDF format as indicated:

== NOVELS ==

* Bouvard and Pécuchet [tr. Earp & Stonier] (New Directions, 1954) – PDF
* Bouvard and Pécuchet [tr. Polizzotti] (Dalkey Archive, 2005) – ePUB
* Dictionary of Accepted Ideas [tr. Barzun] (New Directions, 1968) – ePUB
* Madame Bovary [ed. Cohen, 2e] (Norton Critical Edition, 2005) – PDF
* Madame Bovary [tr. Davis] (Penguin, 2010) – ePUB
* Madame Bovary [tr. Hopkins] (Oxford, 1981) – PDF
* Madame Bovary [tr. MacKenzie] (Hackett, 2009) – ePUB
* Madame Bovary [tr. Marmur] (Signet, 2001) – ePUB / PDF
* Madame Bovary [tr. Marx-Aveling] (Barnes & Noble, 2005) – ePUB
* Madame Bovary [tr. Mauldon] (Oxford, 2008) – ePUB / PDF
* Madame Bovary [tr. Moncrieff] (Oneworld, 2010) – PDF
* Madame Bovary [tr. Russell] (Penguin, 1950) – PDF
* Madame Bovary [tr. Steegmuller] (Vintage, 2013) – ePUB
* Madame Bovary [tr. Thorpe] (Modern Library, 2013) – ePUB
* Madame Bovary [tr. Wall] (Penguin, 2003) – ePUB
* Salambo [tr. Powys Mathers] (Hart, 1976) – PDF
* Salammbo [tr. Krailsheimer] (Penguin, 1977) – ePUB
* Sentimental Education [tr. Baldick, rev'd Wall] (Penguin, 2004) – ePUB
* Sentimental Education [tr. Bouvard, rev'd Tooke] (Wordsworth, 2013) – ePUB
* Sentimental Education [tr. Burlingame] (Signet, 1972) – PDF
* Sentimental Education [tr. Constantine] (Oxford, 2016) – ePUB
* Sentimental Education [tr. Hannigan & Rustum] (Barnes & Noble, 2006) – ePUB
* Sentimental Education [tr. MacKenzie] (Minnesota, 2023) – ePUB
* Sentimental Education [tr. Parmée] (Oxford, 2000) – ePUB
* Sentimental Education [ed. Ranous] (Dover, 2006) – ePUB
* Temptation of Saint Anthony [tr. Hearn] (Modern Library, 2012) – ePUB
* Temptation of Saint Antony [tr. Mrosovsky] (Penguin, 1980 – PDF^
* The First Sentimental Education [tr. Garman] (California, 1972) – PDF

== SHORT FICTION ==

* A Simple Heart [tr. Mandell] (Melville House, 2003) – ePUB
* A Simple Heart [tr. McDowall] (New Directions, 1996) – ePUB
* Early Writings [tr. Griffin] (Nebraska, 1991) – PDF^
* Memoirs of a Madman [tr. Brown] (Hesperus, 2002) – PDF
* Memoirs of a Madman [tr. Unwin] (Liverpool, 2001) – PDF
* Memoirs of a Madman & November [tr. Brown] (Alma Classics, 2013) – ePUB
* Three Tales [tr. Baldick] (Penguin, 1961) – PDF
* Three Tales [tr. Cobb] (Signet, 1964) – PDF
* Three Tales [tr. Krailsheimer] (Oxford, 1999) – PDF
* Three Tales [tr. Whitehouse] (Penguin, 2005) – ePUB

== LETTERS ==

* Flaubert and Turgenev: The Complete Correspondence [ed. Beaumont] (Norton, 1985) – PDF
* Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour [tr. Steegmuller] (Penguin, 1996) – PDF^
* Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence [tr. Steegmuller & Bray] (Harvill, 1993) – PDF
* Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1880 [ed. Steegmuller] (NYRB, 2023) – ePUB
* Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857 [ed. Steegmuller] (Harvard, 1980) – PDF
* Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1857-1880 [ed. Steegmuller] (Harvard, 1982) – PDF
* Selected Letters [ed. Steegmuller] (Farrar, Straus & Young, 1953) – PDF^

== NOTEBOOK ==

* Intimate Notebook, 1840-1841 [tr. Steegmuller] (Doubleday, 1967) – PDF

== ANTHOLOGY ==

* Complete Works (Delphi Classics, 2013) – ePUB
* Œuvres (Pynch, 2014) – ePUB

PDF^ courtesy of @Mohamed5438


Please seed and share with others. 🙂