This is what "Penguin Classics" had to say about Gustav Flaubert:
WHO IS GUSTAVE FLAUBERT?
Pampered second son of a super-wealthy doctor. A great blonde giant of a man with green eyes and a splendid actor's voice. Lives quietly at home with his widowed mother, writing wonderful novels at a rate of five words an hour. Escapes regularly, from the age of fifteen, for miscellaneous wild unhygienic antics in brothels. Favourite reading: the Marquis de Sade. A great traveller (Corsica, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Morocco) and a great connoisseur of courtesans, actresses, dancing girls, acrobats, gypsies, idiots and simpletons of every stripe. Detests his respectable, provincial neighbours. Refers to them as the bourgeoisie. Usually to be found laid out on a white bearskin rug in front of a great fire, simply dreaming. Otherwise, pacing the room, waving his arms, sweat pouring down his face, bellowing out his latest sentence, a whole afternoon's work, his green eyes ablaze with excitement. Enjoys an immense but totally bogus local reputation for writing immoral books. Nice people avoid his company and he � very boisterously - returns the compliment.
In 1856, after five years of work, Flaubert published his masterpiece, Madame Bovary, in a Paris journal. Portraying the frustrations and love affairs of a romantic young woman married to a dull provincial doctor, the novel is written in a superbly controlled style. The book resulted in his being prosecuted on moral grounds, but he won the case.
This was followed by Salammb� (1863), a meticulously documented novel of ancient Carthage; a revision of an earlier novel, L��ducation sentimentale (1870); The Temptation of St. Anthony (1874); and Three Tales (1877), which contained the great short story �A Simple Heart.� After his death his unfinished satire Bouvard and P�cuchet was published (1881). His correspondence, including that with George Sand and the letters to his niece Caroline, appeared in nine volumes (1926�33).