The Letters Of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Few windows into the mind of a literary genius are as intimate or as revelatory as his private correspondence, and the letters of Gustave Flaubert — spanning the formative years of 1830 to 1857 — stand as one of the most extraordinary collections in the French literary canon. This volume chronicles the inner life of the man who would give the world Madame Bovary, tracing his intellectual passions, his tormented friendships, his romantic obsessions, and his ferocious dedication to the craft of prose, all rendered with a raw candour that his published fiction never quite permits. The letters capture a young Flaubert wrestling with romantic idealism and provincial ennui, a maturing artist forging his aesthetic doctrine of impersonality and stylistic perfection in the very crucible of his personal triumphs and despairs. Translated, selected, and edited with consummate scholarly care by Francis Steegmuller — himself one of the foremost authorities on French literature — this edition presents Flaubert's voice with a fidelity that honours both the letter and the spirit of the original French. Steegmuller's masterful editorial commentary illuminates the social and literary landscape of nineteenth-century France, situating each letter within its biographical and historical context without ever overshadowing Flaubert's magnificent prose. For readers who believe they know Flaubert through his novels alone, this collection poses an unsettling and irresistible question: what does it mean to encounter the architect of modern realism speaking, for once, entirely for himself?
Author: Francis Steegmuller
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
Few windows into the mind of a literary genius are as intimate or as revelatory as his private correspondence, and the letters of Gustave Flaubert — spanning the formative years of 1830 to 1857 — stand as one of the most extraordinary collections in the French literary canon. This volume chronicles the inner life of the man who would give the world Madame Bovary, tracing his intellectual passions, his tormented friendships, his romantic obsessions, and his ferocious dedication to the craft of prose, all rendered with a raw candour that his published fiction never quite permits. The letters capture a young Flaubert wrestling with romantic idealism and provincial ennui, a maturing artist forging his aesthetic doctrine of impersonality and stylistic perfection in the very crucible of his personal triumphs and despairs. Translated, selected, and edited with consummate scholarly care by Francis Steegmuller — himself one of the foremost authorities on French literature — this edition presents Flaubert's voice with a fidelity that honours both the letter and the spirit of the original French. Steegmuller's masterful editorial commentary illuminates the social and literary landscape of nineteenth-century France, situating each letter within its biographical and historical context without ever overshadowing Flaubert's magnificent prose. For readers who believe they know Flaubert through his novels alone, this collection poses an unsettling and irresistible question: what does it mean to encounter the architect of modern realism speaking, for once, entirely for himself?