December 12 (1821), is the birthday of French author and short story writer Gustave Flaubert. He was born in Rouen, France. He’s best known for the novel Madame Bovary (1857).
His father convinced him to go to law school, but he dropped out. So his father bought him a house on the Seine, and Flaubert devoted the rest of his life to writing. After his father died, he moved back in with his mother, where he lived until he was 50 years old.
It took him about five years to write Madame Bovary, about the adulterous affair of a provincial housewife. He said, “Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
Most of Flaubert’s novels were unsuccessful. A Sentimental Education (1869) sold fewer than 3,000 copies in its first four years in print. But he became popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially among writers like James Joyce.
