Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was a French novelist known for an exacting prose method, sometimes spending days on a single page in pursuit of the exact word. Madame Bovary (1856) brought him a prosecution for offending public morals, of which he was acquitted, and the scandal made the book. He wrote slowly thereafter, producing Salammbo, A Sentimental Education and the unfinished Bouvard et Pecuchet.