Gustave Flaubert

One very influential French writer is Gustave Flaubert born on December 12, 1821 and died on May 8, 1880. His first novel Madame Bovary written in 1857 and his Correspondence and devotion to aesthetics makes him one of the greatest novelists in Western Literature.
Flaubert travelled extensively with his lifelong friend Maxime Du Camp. He spend five weeks in Istanbul in 1850 and Carthage in 1858 to research his novel Salammbo. Flaubert was open about his sexual activities with prostitutes both male and female. Flaubert never married and his death was a result of venereal diseases.
Flaubert took seven years to write Sentimental Education and was his last complete novel published in 1869. Flaubert wrote Le Candidat that was unsuccessful and published The Temptation of Saint Antony in 1857. He wrote Three Tales in 1877 and tried to finish Bouvard et Pecuchet. This novel was a satire on the futility of human knowledge and the omnipresence of mediocrity.
His best known work Madame Bovary was published in 1856 and was criticized as scandalous. His commitment t style and expressions is still admired by novelists today.