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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Listings for Author:  

Gustav Flaubert

 

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Gustav Flaubert : Madame Bovary

[Spoto states that Hitchcock read Flaubert when he was around 15 or 16 and] 'He afterwards admitted that his favourite character in fiction was Emma Bovary.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Hitchcock      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : 

''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers del'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : correspondence

Leon Edel, introducing vol 1 of Henry James's Letters: " ... [By the end of his life Henry James] had read Flaubert's general correspondence with the close attention of a craftsman seeking to discover how a fellow-artist lived and worked. He had read critically all of Stevenson's letters ..."

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : 

'[Around 1912-13, when she began her association with Mrs Catherine Dawson Scott] Charlotte [Mew] [...] was reading Flaubert as always, Chekhov, Conrad and Verlaine'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Mew      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Madame Bovary

'Absorbed as always in books, Willie read seriously in both French and German literature. His favourites in French were the "Maximes" of La Rochefoucauld, "La Princesse de Cleves" (which inspired his play "Caesar's Wife"), the tragedies of Racine, the novels of Voltaire, Stendhal's "Le Rouge et le Noir" and "La Chartreuse de Parme", Balzac's "Pere Goriot", Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", the works of Anatole France, the exotic tales of Pierre Loti and the well-crafted stories of Maupassant'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Somerset Maugham      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert :  La Tentation de Saint Antoine.

'I find I have no time for reading except times of fatigue when I wish merely to refresh myself. O − and I read over again for this purpose − Flaubert?s "Tentation de Saint Antoine":it struck me a good deal at first, but this second time it has fetched me immensely; I am but just done with it, so you will know the large proportion of salt to take with my present statement that it?s the finest thing I ever read! Of course, it isn?t that, it?s full of [italics] longueurs [end italics], and it is not quite ?red up?, as we say in Scotland, not quite articulate, but there are splendid things in it.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Madame Bovary

'[...] you remind me a little of Flaubert, whose "Madame Bovary" I have just reread with respectful admiration.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : letters

Sunday 17 December: 'I dined with Clive [Bell] to see Sickert the other night [15 December] [...] he [Sickert]'s chiselled, severe; has read: was reading Goldoni he said. & Flaubert's letters.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Sickert      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : letters

Sunday 21 June 1936, during composition of The Years: 'A very strange, most remarkable summer [...] I am learning my craft in the most fierce conditions. Really reading Flaubert's letters I hear my own voice cry out Oh art! Patience. Find him consoling, admonishing.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : L'Education Sentimentale

'In the early thirties she had read a lot of French, starting with Stendhal: and a chunk of his "De l'amour", in the French, found its way into "To the North". In 1932 she was reading for the first time Flaubert's "L'education sentimentale", and told Lady Ottoline: "What perfect writing, and what a clear powerful mind, and what a perfect picture of an enchantment he can produce. And what compass he has: this picture of colour and movement compared with the sad immobility of poor Bovary." A few months later she began translating it'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Bowen      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : L'Education Sentimentale

'I doubt if you ought to call France & Flaubert "dry". "L’Education Sentimentale" ought to be read with ease. Ditto "Thais", & "La Rotisserie". Personally, though, I think France over-rated. You ought to read "Bubu de Montparnasse" of Charles Louis Philippe. This is a great little novel, one of the finest modern French novels. I think "Coeur simple" is the best thing Flaubert ever wrote, except his correspondence, which is his best work, & ought to be read. I tell you that Lytton Strachey’s "Eminent Victorians" is a most juicy & devastating affair, I thoroughly enjoyed it.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Un Coeur Simple

'I doubt if you ought to call France & Flaubert "dry". "L’Education Sentimentale" ought to be read with ease. Ditto "Thais", & "La Rotisserie". Personally, though, I think France over-rated. You ought to read "Bubu de Montparnasse" of Charles Louis Philippe. This is a great little novel, one of the finest modern French novels. I think "Coeur simple" is the best thing Flaubert ever wrote, except his correspondence, which is his best work, & ought to be read. I tell you that Lytton Strachey’s "Eminent Victorians" is a most juicy & devastating affair, I thoroughly enjoyed it.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Madame Bovary

Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 January 1903: 'I don't think my December list of books read equals yours. It includes however Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer, Barry Pain, Browning, D'Aurevilly, Oscar Wilde, Flaubert, A Manual of Ethics & Shakespeare [...] I don't see how anyone, after reading Madame Bovary, can doubt which is the supremest of all novels -- though I now remember writing the same to you about Le Pere Goriot.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Bouvard et Pecuchet

'The clerk who cashes my cheques at the bank is quite a bright, intelligent-looking boy. To-day I had a copy of [italics] Bouvard et Pecuchet [end italics]. He looked at it with curiosity then said "I expect you think I'm rude, looking like that. But I used to read a lot of those sorts of books once" "What sort of books?" "Oh, yellow books like that. I picked up a lot in a booksellers. But mine were much bigger than that" "What were they?" "Oh I don't remember their names or what they were about" "Do you remember the authors?" "Can't say I do. I seem to remember one was some sort of a Japanese story" "And they were in French?" "Oh yes, in French of course".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Madame Bovary

Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 29 September 1907: 'I read Madame Bovary again as I went up to Hatton in the train last week to look after cattle disease. As I read it again, it seemed to me to be the saddest & most beautiful book I had ever read. Surely it is the beginning & end of realism [comments further].'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Correspondance

Gone on with Comparetti Vergilio nel Medio Evo. Bourget’s Physiologie de l’Amour. [next unclear] Dumas Nouveaux Entr’actes. Ribot Maladies de la Volonté. In Flaubert’s Correspondance. Mercier Sanity and Insanity. Zola La fortune des Rougon. Son Excellence ER. Loti Roman d’un Enfant. Zola La Curée. Mme Bovary. Manresa (Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius). Ribot. Hérédité Psychologique. Zola Nana. Bjornson. In God’s Way. Tolstoy Marchez pendant que vous avez la lumiere. In Mary Wilkins. Tolstoy Les fruits de la Science. Vacherot Science et conscience. Tolstoy. Ivan imbecile etc. Zola Au bonheur des Dames. Julius Caesar. In Numa Roumestan 2nd time. In Chartreuse de Parma 3rd time. Zola La Terre. Tolstoy & Bondareff. Le Travail. Ibsen Canard Sauvage & Rosmersholm. Goncourt Clairon. Meinhold Amber Witch. The Newcomes. Ibsen H. Gabler. Kingsley Alton Locke. Spencer etc Plea for Liberty. Arnold White Tries at Truth. Merimée Venus d’Ille & Ames du Purgatoire. [next unclear] Havelock Ellis The Criminal. Zola La Reine. Stevenson Cervennes. Maeterlinck Les Aveugles, L’Intruse. Maupassant Bel Ami. Fabre L’abbe Tigrane. Much Kipling – Meredith Beauchamp. Morris News from nowhere. Mill on the Floss.- Zola l’argent. Diderot Religieuse. Laveleye Luxe. Mary Marguerites. Spencer Ethics. Sand La Morceau Diable. La Petite Fadette. Guyau Morale sans obligation. In Hazlitt. Zola Pot Bouille. Balzac Paysans.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Lee      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : [unknown]

'Gissing, probably more than any of his contemporaries, knew well the main trends of European literature at that time, for he continued to read widely in both French and German, as well as English. During the eighteen-eighties, he re-read George Sand and much of Balzac; read Zola for the first time; purchased cheap German editions of Turgenev and read them all; was famiiar with Daudet, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and later de Maupassant; and read Ibsen as his work became available and in the late eighties saw his plays when they were performed for the first time in London'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : La Tentation de saint Antoine

'In his copy of Vigny's "Chatterton" he marked the sentence, "En toi la reverie continuelle a tue l'action", and in Renan he marked a comment that the Celts knew how to plunge their hands into a man's entrails and bring out secrets of the infinite. What he always thought of as his Celtic strain would have been fascinated by "La Tentation de St Antoine", in which Flaubert meticulously describes the saint's visions of strange and dreadful beings. Owen read the book with care, underlining frequently. Tailhade had also marked it, writing "cretin!" against a criticism by the editor of the novel's "grands defauts". Evidently agreing with Tailhade, Owen went on to read at least two more of Flaubert's novels, "Madame Bovary" and "Salammbo". "Flaubert has my vote for novel-writing!", he exclaimed to Gunston in July 1915, and he told his mother that he was reading "Salammbo" "with more interest than the Communiques".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Madame Bovary

'In his copy of Vigny's "Chatterton" he marked the sentence, "En toi la reverie continuelle a tue l'action", and in Renan he marked a comment that the Celts knew how to plunge their hands into a man's entrails and bring out secrets of the infinite. What he always thought of as his Celtic strain would have been fascinated by "La Tentation de St Antoine", in which Flaubert meticulously describes the saint's visions of strange and dreadful beings. Owen read the book with care, underlining frequently. Tailhade had also marked it, writing "cretin!" against a criticism by the editor of the novel's "grands defauts". Evidently agreing with Tailhade, Owen went on to read at least two more of Flaubert's novels, "Madame Bovary" and "Salammbo". "Flaubert has my vote for novel-writing!", he exclaimed to Gunston in July 1915, and he told his mother that he was reading "Salammbo" "with more interest than the Communiques".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Salammbo

'In his copy of Vigny's "Chatterton" he marked the sentence, "En toi la reverie continuelle a tue l'action", and in Renan he marked a comment that the Celts knew how to plunge their hands into a man's entrails and bring out secrets of the infinite. What he always thought of as his Celtic strain would have been fascinated by "La Tentation de St Antoine", in which Flaubert meticulously describes the saint's visions of strange and dreadful beings. Owen read the book with care, underlining frequently. Tailhade had also marked it, writing "cretin!" against a criticism by the editor of the novel's "grands defauts". Evidently agreing with Tailhade, Owen went on to read at least two more of Flaubert's novels, "Madame Bovary" and "Salammbo". "Flaubert has my vote for novel-writing!", he exclaimed to Gunston in July 1915, and he told his mother that he was reading "Salammbo" "with more interest than the Communiques".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Bouvard et Pecuchet

'Symonds has gone off to Italy with your Bouvard et Pecuchet, a most loathsome work.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : [unknown]

'Pearl's conversation was always full of references to the works of the French novelists of the period, so I proceeded to read books by Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Anatole France and Colette. I had to read the Italian poets in translation. All this was a great joy to me, and, as I have said, a wonderful education.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Madame Bovary

'At one time I knew entire pages of "Madame Bovary" by heart. But if "Madame Bovary" is a masterpiece "Salammbô" is close to a miracle. I well remember that when I was writing "[The]N[igger]of [the] N[arcissus]", "Salammbô" was my morning book.While taking coffee I would read a page or two at random--and there is hardly a page that isn't marvellous.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Salammbô

'At one time I knew entire pages of "Madame Bovary" by heart. But if "Madame Bovary" is a masterpiece "Salammbô" is close to a miracle. I well remember that when I was writing "[The]N[igger]of [the] N[arcissus]", "Salammbô" was my morning book.While taking coffee I would read a page or two at random--and there is hardly a page that isn't marvellous.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : Madame Bovary

'You say [in Walpole's critical study "Joseph Conrad"(1916)] that I have been under the formative influence of "Madame Bovary". In fact I have read it only after finishing "A.[Almayer's] F.[Folly]" as I did all the other works of Flaubert; and anyway my Flaubert is the Flaubert of "St. Antoine" and "Ed[ucation] Sent[imentale]" and that only from the point of view of rendering of concrete things and visual impressions.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

  

Gustave Flaubert : 

'At the foot of the bed was an oak "library table" [...]. There were several piles of books on it, W. W. Jacobs for light reading, de Maupassant, Flaubert, Galsworthy, Cunninghame Graham, various periodicals, and a book, which has always been a mystery to me, "Out of the Hurly Burly" by Max Ad[e]ler. In the window stood an arm chair of cherry wood, lacquered black, on which my father often sat to read for half an hour or so before "turning in".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Conrad      Print: Book

 

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