#Madame Bovary

[rhera]

MADAME BOVARY 1949, dir. Vincente Minnelli

[petaltexturedskies]

At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. Each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

[amicus-noctis]

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you” ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Painting: Justyna Kopania ~ Collection of Oil Paintings "Sea"

[losthavenmine]

Madame Bovary (2014)

[lamorchemoveilsoleelaltrestelle]

Mia Wasikowska in Madame Bovary (2014)

[mancandykings]

Logan Marshall-Green as Marquis d'Andervilliers || Madame Bovary (2014)

[animula-vagula-blandula]

-Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

[didanagy]

MADAME BOVARY (2014)

dir. sophie barthes

[macrolit]

It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere.

- Gustave Flaubert

[uwmspeccoll]

Publishers' Binding Thursday

This week's choice from the stacks is a 1928 edition of French novelist Gustave Flaubert's (1821-1880) Madame Bovary, published in London by John Lane The Bodley Head, Ltd. and in New York by Dodd, Mead and Company. Flaubert's work strives for a sense of realism and of perfection, always seeking "le mot juste"—"the right word." He famously said that "an author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."

Madame Bovary was originally serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856 and as a book in two volumes in 1857. There was an obscenity trial about the contents of the novel, which gained the novel notoriety. This edition features an English translation by British critic and translator J. Lewis May and illustrations by British illustrator John Austen (1886-1948). I believe that Austen did all of the illustrations for the book, including the charming wood-engraved tulip endpapers and the head and tailpieces at the beginning and end of each chapter. It is also likely that he designed the figure on the cover, which also appears on the dust jacket of the book (not pictured).

View more Publishers' Binding Thursday posts.

View more posts with work by John Austen.

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

[rhera]

"Is it a crime to want things to be beautiful?" MADAME BOVARY (1949) dir. Vincente Minnelli

[petaltexturedskies]

"Ah!" she said, lifting her lovely tear-bright eyes to the ceiling. "If you knew all the dreams I've dreamed!"

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

[amicus-noctis]

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life." ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Painting: 'The Count of Monte Cristo' by Mead Schaeffer

[thewomanwhoreads]

Library finds x

[lamorchemoveilsoleelaltrestelle]

Mia Wasikowska in Madame Bovary (2014)

[soulmaking]

"He admired the sublimity of her soul and the lace on her petticoat."

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, translated by Lydia Davis