The French novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was one of the most important forces in creating the modern novel as a conscious art form and in launching, much against his will, the realistic school in France.

Gustave Flaubert was born on Dec. 12, 1821, in Rouen. Rouen's medieval charm, the bustle of its business (which revolted him), and the comfortable bourgeois ease that flowed from his father's position as chief surgeon at the municipal hospital marked the sensitive child. Fearing his father, he found outlets for his overflowing affections in his mother and younger sister. His sister died in childbirth when Flaubert was 24, but his mother lived (usually with him) until his fiftieth year. He was tied to her by bonds of love and exasperation, which he never fully understood.

As an adolescent of 15, Flaubert fell platonically in love with an older married woman, Elisa Schlésinger, and remembered her...