Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert, Eleanor Marx Aveling (translator)

Language: English (US)

Married to a dull country doctor, Emma Bovary tries to live the life she has read about in novels, through two affairs and a rising column of debt. Flaubert refuses to editorialise, which is precisely what the prosecutors objected to in 1857. This is Eleanor Marx Aveling's 1886 translation, the first into English. Public domain in the EU (author died 1880). Source: Project Gutenberg.

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To Marie-Antoine-Jules Senard Member of the Paris Bar, Ex-President of the National Assembly, and Former Minister of the Interior

Dear and Illustrious Friend,

Permit me to inscribe your name at the head of this book, and above its dedication; for it is to you, before all, that I owe its publication. Reading over your magnificent defence, my work has acquired for myself, as it were, an unexpected authority.

Accept, then, here, the homage of my gratitude, which, how great soever it is, will never attain the height of your eloquence and your devotion.

Gustave Flaubert,

Paris, 12 April 1857

MADAME BOVARY

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