Gustave Flaubert wrote a book called Sentimental Education, Volume 1, or The History of a Young Man. The book is about a young guy from a small town in France named Frederic Moreau. He is in love with Madame Arnoux, who is married. The story takes place during the French Revolution of 1848, and it shows how French society and government changed during that time. The book is a look at romantic love and how it can lead to disappointment. Frederic follows Madame Arnoux to Paris, where he gets caught up in the political and social changes of the time. He also has a few other relationships, including one with a woman named Rosanette, but his feelings for Madame Arnoux don't change. Flaubert is thought to be one of the best writers of the 19th century because of the way he writes.

This exquisite novel tells the story of one of the most compelling heroines in modern literature--Emma Bovary. "Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgement." - Henry James Unhappily married to a devoted, clumsy provincial doctor, Emma revolts against the ordinariness of her life by pursuing voluptuous dreams of ecstasy and love. But her sensuous and sentimental desires lead her only to suffering corruption and downfall. A brilliant psychological portrait, Madame Bovary searingly depicts the human mind in search of transcendence. Who is Madame Bovary? Flaubert's answer to this question was superb: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." Acclaimed as a masterpiece upon its publication in 1857, the work catapulted Flaubert to the ranks of the world's greatest novelists. This volume, with its fine translation by Lowell Bair, a perceptive introduction by Leo Bersani, and a complete supplement of essays and critical comments, is the indispensable Madame Bovary.

One of the most well-known and influential autobiographies ever written, The Education of Henry Adams is told in the third person, as if its author were watching his own life unwind. It begins with his early life in Quincy, the family seat outside of Boston, and soon moves on to primary school, Harvard College, and beyond. He learns about the unpredictability of politics from statesmen and diplomats, and the newest discoveries in technology, science, history, and art from some of the most important thinkers and creators of the day. In essentially every case, Adams claims, his education and upbringing let him down, leaving him in the dark. But as the historian David S. Brown puts it, this is a “charade”: The Education’s “greatest irony is its claim to telling the story of its author’s ignorance, confusion, and misdirection.” Instead, Adams uses its “vigorous prose and confident assertions” to attack “the West after 1400.” For instance, industrialization and technology make Adams wonder “whether the American people knew where they were driving.” And in one famous chapter, “The Dynamo and the Virgin,” he contrasts the rise of electricity and the power it brings with the strength and resilience of religious belief in the Middle Ages. The grandson and great-grandson of two presidents and the son of a politician and diplomat who served under Lincoln as minister to Great Britain, Adams was born into immense privilege, as he knew well: “Probably no child, born in the year, held better cards than he.” After growing up a Boston Brahmin, he worked as a journalist, historian, and professor, moving in early middle age to Washington. Although Adams distributed a privately printed edition of a hundred copies of The Education for friends and family in 1907, it wasn’t published more widely until 1918, the year he died. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1919, and in 1999 a Modern Library panel placed it first on its list of the best nonfiction books published in the twentieth century. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

No history of literature could afford to overlook Gustave Flaubert, the meticulous craftsman whose Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education are enduring classics. His finished novels are easily available, but his earliest works have been the private province of professional scholars. Early Writings is the first English translation of Flaubert?s astonishing juvenilia, astonishing not only because of its glimmers of genius but also because of its fantasy. Now readers will be able to see the contours of Flaubert?s career more fully; no note how much effort he took to learn and unlearn, to overcome and suppress. The eleven essays ad tales in this collection include about half of Flaubert?s early experiments in writing. They reveal the eye of a precocious artist who used everything from routine newspaper accounts to the psychopathology of his everyday life as material for fiction. His transformation of reality is best exemplified by ?Diary of a Madman,? based on a chance encounter of the pubescent Gustave with Elisa Schlesinger at Trouville during the summer of 1836. The range of his youthful imagination is illustrated by pieces in the Byronic mold, by caricature of philistine values, epic scenes, metaphysical themes, the fantastic genre of the ?wild tale,? and psychological studies that anticipate his larger portrayals of character. Early Writings reveals the young writer working toward more complex tableaux, increasingly preoccupied with the tension between language and art, medium and ideal. From the beginning Flaubert was obsessed by the daunting task of making language eternalize fleeting perceptions.

Flaubert's unforgettable memoirs of travels abroad At once a classic of travel literature and a penetrating portrait of a “sensibility on tour,” Flaubert in Egypt wonderfully captures the young writer’s impressions during his 1849 voyages. Using diaries, letters, travel notes, and the evidence of Flaubert’s traveling companion, Maxime Du Camp, Francis Steegmuller reconstructs his journey through the bazaars and brothels of Cairo and down the Nile to the Red Sea. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.