Author Guide · Classic French Fiction
Books Written by
In January 1857 Gustave Flaubert stood trial in Paris because of his first novel. The state prosecutor, Ernest Pinard, charged that Madame Bovary, serialised in the Revue de Paris the previous autumn, was an outrage to public and religious morality. The court acquitted him in February, the book came out in two volumes that April, and it became a bestseller. Flaubert, a surgeon’s son from Rouen, spent about five years writing it at Croisset on the Seine, where he lived for most of his life. He published only five books in his lifetime and worked on each for years, searching for le mot juste, the right word. This guide covers his 7 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 key books · 1857–1901 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Gustave Flaubert published five books in his lifetime: Madame Bovary (1857), Salammbô (1862), Sentimental Education (1869), The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874) and Three Tales (1877). Bouvard and Pécuchet followed in 1881, a year after his death. Start with Madame Bovary; below is what each book is about and how they connect.
Where to Start with Gustave Flaubert
If you want the novel that made his name
→ Madame Bovary (1857) — the 1857 book that put him on trial.
If you want something short first
→ Three Tales (1877) — three stories, including “A Simple Heart”.
If you want his portrait of a generation
→ Sentimental Education (1869) — Paris before and after the revolution of 1848.
If you want his comic side
→ Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881) — two clerks who try to learn everything.
7 Gustave Flaubert Books, in Order
Madame Bovary
Emma, raised on romantic novels, marries Charles Bovary, a dull country health officer, and moves with him from Tostes to the market town of Yonville. Bored, she has affairs with the landowner Rodolphe and the clerk Léon, and the merchant Lheureux draws her into debt. When every request for money is refused she swallows arsenic. Serialised in the Revue de Paris from October to December 1856, it led to an obscenity trial in 1857 that ended in acquittal; Jean Renoir, Vincente Minnelli and Claude Chabrol all filmed it.
Salammbô
Carthage during the Mercenary War after the First Punic War, in the third century BC. Salammbô, a priestess of Tanit and daughter of the general Hamilcar Barca, becomes the obsession of Matho, a Libyan leader of the unpaid mercenaries who turn on the city. Flaubert drew on Polybius and visited the site of Carthage in 1858. The book was a popular success and inspired several operas, including an unfinished one by Mussorgsky.
Sentimental Education
Frédéric Moreau, a young man from the provinces, comes to Paris and falls for Madame Arnoux, the wife of a publisher and faience maker, a love that stays unconsummated for decades. Around him his friends drift through art, money and politics during the revolution of 1848 and the rise of the Second Empire. George Sand and Émile Zola praised it; Henry James called it “elaborately and massively dreary”.
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
One night in the life of the hermit Anthony in the Egyptian desert, written as a play script: Lust and Death, the Queen of Sheba, heretics, gods and monsters each try to draw him from his faith. The idea came from a painting of the subject Flaubert saw in Genoa in 1845. He completed versions in 1849, 1856 and 1872 before publishing the final one in 1874.
Three Tales
Three stories published together in April 1877. “A Simple Heart” follows Félicité, a servant in Pont-l’Évêque who loses everyone she loves and ends up with a stuffed parrot, Loulou. “The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller” is a medieval saint’s life, and “Herodias” tells the death of John the Baptist at Herod’s feast. It was the last book he finished.
Bouvard and Pécuchet
Two Paris copy-clerks meet in 1838, and when Bouvard inherits a fortune they retire to a farm near Chavignolles in Normandy and try, one after another, agriculture, chemistry, medicine, history, literature, politics and religion, failing at nearly all of it. Flaubert died before finishing it; it was published in 1881, and his notes show the pair returning to copying.
Memoirs of a Madman
Written in 1838, when Flaubert was sixteen, and dedicated to his friend Alfred Le Poittevin. A narrator alternates bleak reflections on life and death with memories, among them a summer by the sea at fifteen when he fell for a married woman, Maria, usually linked to Élisa Schlésinger. It first appeared in La Revue blanche from December 1900 to February 1901.
In What Order to Read Gustave Flaubert
None of Flaubert’s books continue from one another, so you can read them in any order. Publication order shows a pattern, though: he alternated between the modern French world (Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education) and the distant past (Salammbô, Saint Anthony), and Three Tales holds both in one small book.
Most readers begin with Madame Bovary. If you want a shorter way in, read “A Simple Heart” from Three Tales first. Leave The Temptation of Saint Anthony and Memoirs of a Madman until you know the main novels.
A reading path
1. Madame Bovary (1857)
2. Three Tales (1877)
3. Sentimental Education (1869)
4. Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881)
5. Salammbô (1862)
Everything Else Gustave Flaubert Wrote
Beyond the 7 key books: 4 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Play
1
1 book · 1874
- 1874Le Candidata political comedy, staged in 1874 without success
Posthumous works and letters
3
3 books · 1884–1913
- 1884Letters to George Sandtheir correspondence, with an introduction by Guy de Maupassant
- 1887Correspondancehis collected letters, first published in several volumes from 1887
- 1913Dictionary of Received Ideasan alphabetical list of clichés, linked to Bouvard and Pécuchet, first published in 1911–13
The years · 1821–1880
Quick facts about Gustave Flaubert
- Known for
- Gustave Flaubert is known as the French novelist who made the precise, impersonal realist novel into an art, above all with Madame Bovary, the book that put him on trial in 1857.
- 1821
- Born in Rouen, Normandy
- 1849
- Leaves for Greece and Egypt
- 1857
- Madame Bovary
- 1880
- Dies at Croisset, near Rouen
- Born
- 12 December 1821, Rouen; his father was the senior surgeon of the city’s main hospital
- Died
- 8 May 1880, Croisset, near Rouen, of a cerebral haemorrhage, aged 58
- Education
- Studied law in Paris from 1840; gave it up after an epileptic attack in 1846
- Home
- Croisset, on the Seine near Rouen, for most of his life
- Trial
- Prosecuted for Madame Bovary in January 1857; acquitted
- Circle
- Friend and correspondent of George Sand; mentor to Guy de Maupassant
- Family
- Never married; close to his niece, Caroline Commanville
The red mark is 1857: Madame Bovary appears in book form after Flaubert’s acquittal.
How Gustave Flaubert Writes: The Search for the Right Word
Flaubert wrote slowly. Madame Bovary took him about five years, from the early 1850s to 1856, and The Temptation of Saint Anthony went through three versions over a quarter of a century before he published it. His principle was le mot juste: for every thing there is one right word, and the writer’s work is to find it.
He kept himself out of his fiction. In a letter to Louise Colet in December 1852 he wrote that the author must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. His narrators rarely comment or judge; instead he shows Emma Bovary’s world through her own clichéd longings, letting her thoughts slide into the narration so that the irony lies in the arrangement, not in any remark.
He also researched like a historian. For Salammbô he worked from Polybius and travelled to Carthage in 1858; for Bouvard and Pécuchet he read widely in each field his two clerks attempt. His letters, to Colet, George Sand and others, are read today almost as much as his novels for what they show about this method.
Frequently asked questions about Gustave Flaubert’s books
How many books has Gustave Flaubert written?
He published five books in his lifetime: Madame Bovary, Salammbô, Sentimental Education, The Temptation of Saint Anthony and Three Tales, plus a play, Le Candidat (1874). This page lists 7 key books, adding the posthumous Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881) and his early Memoirs of a Madman (1901). His letters and the Dictionary of Received Ideas were also published after his death.
What are Gustave Flaubert’s books in order?
Madame Bovary (1857), Salammbô (1862), Sentimental Education (1869), The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874), Three Tales (1877), Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881) and Memoirs of a Madman (1901, written in 1838).
Where should I start with Gustave Flaubert?
With Madame Bovary, the novel that made his name. If you want something shorter first, read “A Simple Heart”, the first of his Three Tales.
What is Gustave Flaubert’s most famous book?
Madame Bovary (1857), the story of Emma Bovary, a doctor’s wife in provincial Normandy whose affairs and debts end in her suicide. It was serialised in 1856, led to an obscenity trial and became a bestseller in book form.
Why was Flaubert put on trial for Madame Bovary?
After the novel was serialised in the Revue de Paris in 1856, the government prosecuted Flaubert, the review’s manager Léon Laurent-Pichat and the printer for an outrage to public and religious morality and good conduct. The imperial prosecutor Ernest Pinard led the case; Maître Senard defended Flaubert. The trial was heard on 29 January 1857 and all three were acquitted in February 1857, though the court reprimanded Flaubert.
What is Sentimental Education about?
Frédéric Moreau, a young man from the provinces, and his lifelong, unconsummated love for Madame Arnoux, set against Paris before and after the revolution of 1848 and the founding of the Second Empire. It was published in 1869.
Has Madame Bovary been made into a film?
Several times. Jean Renoir filmed it in 1934, Vincente Minnelli in 1949 with Jennifer Jones and James Mason, Claude Chabrol in 1991 with Isabelle Huppert, and Sophie Barthes in 2014 with Mia Wasikowska.
Did Flaubert finish Bouvard and Pécuchet?
No. He died on 8 May 1880 with the manuscript breaking off near the end, and it was published unfinished in 1881. He had planned to follow it with a sample of what the two clerks copy, possibly including the Dictionary of Received Ideas.
When and how did Gustave Flaubert die?
On 8 May 1880 at Croisset, his home near Rouen, of a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 58.
Who were Flaubert’s literary friends?
He corresponded for years with George Sand; their letters were published in 1884 with an introduction by Guy de Maupassant, his protégé. His long relationship with the poet Louise Colet, from 1846 to 1854, is recorded in his letters to her.
Footnotes
- Gustave Flaubert — Wikipedia
- Madame Bovary — Wikipedia
- Le procès Flaubert, janvier 1857 — Fondation Napoléon
- Sentimental Education — Wikipedia
- Trois Contes — Larousse
- Salammbô — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The author, in his work, must be like God in the universe, everywhere present, and nowhere visible.”
— Gustave Flaubert, letter to Louise Colet, 9 December 1852
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations