Book Review
Title: Flaubert: A Biography
Author: Herbert R. Lottman
Publisher: Little Brown & Co
Date: January 1, 1989
ISBN: 978-0316533423
This biography of Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) is a great story and Herbert Lottman is a great storyteller. Flaubert finished law school and then promptly forgot all about law and embarked on a literary life, becoming one of the greatest novelists of the nineteenth century.
The book chronicles the struggles and failures and illnesses that plagued Flaubert throughout his life. He labored with excruciating scrupulousness over every word and punctuation in his writing. That slow exacting process, combined with regular periods of illness when he couldn’t work at all, explain why Flaubert’s output was small in comparison with other novelists. His good friend and colleague Émile Zola, for example, published well over 20 major novels. Flaubert published about six major works (depending on who you ask): Madame Bovary, Salammbô, Sentimental Education, Temptation of Saint Anthony, Three Tales, and Bouvard et Pécuchet.
Flaubert’s closest literary friends, those he spent the most time with, and corresponded with the most, included Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Ivan Turgenev, Edmond de Goncourt, Jules de Goncourt, Théophile Gautier, and perhaps closest was George Sand. Flaubert was also close friends with a number of the French aristocracy, especially Princesse Mathilde Bonaparte, daughter of Napoleon’s brother Jérôme Bonaparte; and Prince Louis-Napoléon, the only child of Napoleon III, Emperor of France.
Given Flaubert’s august social circles, the story of Flaubert necessarily weaves in and out of larger Nineteenth-century French history. The political landscape becomes a complementary side story in the life of Flaubert. His movements and life conditions are very much affected by the 1830 July Revolution, Revolutions of 1848, Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Overthrow of Paris by the “Paris Commune” in 1871, among others.
Flaubert never married or “settled down,” but there were very special relationships that he cherished. These are touchingly shown throughout his biography, and how he navigated these amid his work and his extensive travels, and his mixed emotions and personality conflicts within himself—all of which played a rôle in his ever-troubled personal life.
Herbert Lottman produced a minor masterpiece of his own, in this compelling novelistic story of the life of Gustave Flaubert. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in literature, French history, or in simply reading good books.
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Also see: Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education.