Madame Bovary is the debut novel of French writer Gustave Flaubert. Emma Bovary, a country doctor’s wife, dreams of a life beyond the boring people and daily routines that characterize her small town. She craves the excitement of grand romances found in the novels she reads. Emma embarks on a series of passionate love affairs and on a spending spree she can ill afford. Flaubert sets her desperate actions against the backdrop of French bourgeois life in all its stunning banality. He believed completely in the principle of finding ‘le mot juste’ (‘the right word’), as key to achieving high quality in literary art. His relentless and often acidic observations of human folly provide fantastic background to a story that itself could have been banal were it not for the genius of its author. When the novel was first serialized in La Revue de Paris in late 1856, public prosecutors attacked it for “offenses against morality and religion.” The trial in January 1857 made the story notorious. After Flaubert’s acquittal in February 1857, Madame Bovary became a bestseller. A seminal work of literary realism, the novel is now considered one of the most influential works in literary history.