This was the celebrated French author's debut novel, which when initially serialised in La Revue de Paris from October to December 1856 was attacked by the public prosecutors for obscenity. Flaubert was acquitted at the subsequent trial in early 1857 and Madame Bovary became a bestseller when it was published in a single volume in April that year. It is now recognised as his masterpiece and as a seminal work of literary realism.