Gustave Flaubert, (born December 12, 1821, Rouen, France-died May 8, 1880, Croisset), novelist regarded as the prime mover of the realist school of French literature and best known for his masterpiece, Madame Bovary (1857), a realistic portrayal of bourgeois life, which led to a trial on charges of the novel's alleged immorality. Madame Bovary, novel by Gustave Flaubert, serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856 and then published in two volumes the...