The Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert.

FLAUBERT, Gustave.

$8,800.00

Item Number: 95353

New York and London: M. Walker Dunne, 1904.

The limited Académie Française edition of the complete works of Flaubert. One of only 50 sets produced on Japon paper, this is number 40. Octavos, 10 volumes, bound in full morocco with gilt titles and elaborate floral gilt tooling to the spine and front panel, raised gilt bands, fleuron cornerpieces within gilt frames and central gilt floral spray with red and white morocco inlays to the front and rear panel, gilt turn-ins, purple morocco doublures, purple silk endpapers, top edges gilt, other edges uncut, frontispiece to each volume and numerous plates my Clare Victor Dwiggins in both black and white and hand-colored states with illustrated lettered tissue guards. In near fine condition. An exceptionally beautiful set.

The leading exponent of literary realism, French novelist Gustave Flaubert is especially known for his debut novel Madame Bovary. Flaubert believed in the principle of finding "le mot juste" ("the right word"), which he considered the key to achieving quality in literary art. He famously avoided the inexact and the abstract and renounced the cliché. Flaubert published much less prolifically than was the norm for his time due to his painstaking style but exercised an extraordinary influence on members of various schools including Kafka, Nabokov, Guy de Maupassant, Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet, and Zola.