[A] superb, full-length portrait...Flaubert is a superb biography, not least because it gives us the portrait of a man embedded in his country and his age even as he rebels against its values and mores. Brown is masterly at drawing the background to his subject, social and political, writing with authority and an eye for the telling detail that compel fascination as well as respect.
-- Caroline Moore The Spectator
At last, a biography commensurate with the outsize personality and genius of Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880). Brown, author of an acclaimed biography of Zola, offers a tantalizing, penetrating study that embeds the author of Madame Bovary in his time and place: a tumultuous Paris during the revolution of 1848 and the period of expansion and greed known as the Second Empire...Rich, full of passion and tragedy, overflowing with keenly portrayed characters, this superb biography gives us an unforgettable portrait of a literary master: exuberant yet anxious, brilliant yet full of self-doubt, a man who best savored the women he loved in their absence, an artist who claimed to scorn fame but reveled in it once achieved, who couldn't bear loss but whose life was sadly filled with it.
-- Publishers Weekly
One of the virtues of Frederick Brown's quietly persuasive biography is its careful documentation of Flaubert's always agonized search for a literary idea to match his aesthetic ideals. Another is its sensitivity to the complexities of his artistic personality...[Brown] has put together a judicious work that sticks to the record and relies on expertly chosen passages from Flaubert's brilliant letters and the works of his contemporaries to develop a convincing portrait, brushstroke by brushstroke.
-- William Grimes New York Times
Brown is no slouch himself when it comes to research. His new biography of Flaubert is almost as much a cultural history of France in the mid-19th century as it is a life of the author...But however fascinating the world in which he moved, Flaubert doesn't get lost in his own biography. He emerges from the pages of Brown's book as a wonderfully complex blend of the passionate and the persnickety--or as Brown puts it, 'glorifying unruly, sociopathic, large-lunged genius or fussing over stylistic minutiae as obsessively as a Byzantine grammarian.'...He paints a rich portrait of Flaubert's circle of friends and acquaintances, a who's who of 19th-century French writers that includes Zola, the Goncourt brothers, Guy de Maupassant, Théophile Gautier and Charles Sainte-Beuve. But best of all, he gives us Flaubert and his world in all their grand, complicated messiness, the better to appreciate the skill with which Flaubert brought literary order out of the chaos of existence.
-- Charles Matthews Houston Chronicle
Frederick Brown's Flaubert is both valuable and fascinating...Brown provides an exemplary biography, brilliantly detailed and exhaustively researched. Particularly impressive is Brown's ability to convey a welter of intriguing facts eloquently and articulately...Equally impressive are Brown's brilliant analyses of particular scenes from the novel. He is a superb literary analyst and critic. His thoroughness, articulateness and critical mastery combine to make this work at once a remarkably informative and brilliantly incisive portrait of a man and his era.
-- Jamie Spencer St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A beautifully written book with the kind of commitment to Flaubertian detail that few fiction writers achieve, let alone biographers...[A] delightfully overwhelming biography...[Brown's] lucid histories and deeply detailed psychological construction of a literary giant are deserving of the widest audience.
-- Brad Quinn Daily Yomiuri
The most immediate effect of Brown's book is an urgent desire to read absolutely everything Flaubert published...Biographers are handmaids in the literary world, and since Brown's book will win Flaubert many new or returning readers, it is, for this reason alone, a resounding success...Brown's biography [is] funny, racy, gossipy and erudite by turns.
-- Ruth Scurr Daily Telegraph
[A] wonderfully rich and enjoyable book...There have, of course, been biographies of Flaubert before...and, if Frederick Brown's account can add only a small amount to the record, it offers a new richness of context. Showing a positively Flaubertian diligence of research, he has woven his subject into the fustian of his times--literary, social and political. The vicissitudes of French public life from the Revolution of 1848 to the Paris Commune are lucidly laid out.
-- Matthew Sturgis Sunday Telegraph
[A] massive and authoritative biography.
-- Andrew Crumley Scotland on Sunday
[A] splendid new biography...[A] vigorously researched, intellectually nuanced, and exquisitely written book...[A] remarkable book.
-- Christopher Benfey New Republic
Frederick Brown has written a monumental biography of Flaubert...An astounding work of literary biography that scrupulously avoids critical commentary, allowing the documentary evidence speak for itself...[An] encyclopedic work...If you fancy discovering the motivation and inner world of this brilliant, if esoteric, French novelist; if you wish to gently acquaint yourself with the labyrinthine revolutions of French politics in the 19th century; if you like reading biographies of artists or great writers and you are curious to read about the overlapping lives of the literati in the social whirl of 19th-century Paris, then your toil will be richly rewarded.
-- Síofra Pierse Irish Times
Because Flaubert, like his details, is so visible and invisible, he needs to be cleaned of the glaze of his renown every so often and shown afresh; and he needs to be treated by someone who has himself a good eye for detail. Frederick Brown is the right candidate...He is an impeccable scholar with a talent for historical narrative, and the owner of a rich, flexible prose style. His magnificent new book is at once a history of 19th-century France and a brilliant exercise in character animation. A huge amount of research is the private income that gives this book its well-dressed assurance, and that encourages the reader to absorb it greedily; splendid mini-histories of 19th-century medicine and of the law, of relations between French governments and the people, of the development of Paris under Haussmann, of European attitudes toward the Orient, dissolve in the larger fizz of his vivacious story. Brown's biography will clearly be the Life for this generation.
-- James Wood New York Times Book Review
An absorbing book.
-- Owen Richardson The Age
