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Summary: In "Madame Bovary," his story of a shallow, deluded, unfaithful, but consistently compelling woman living in the provinces of nineteenth-century France, Gustave Flaubert invented not only the modern novel but also a modern attitude toward human character and human experience that remains with us to this day. One of the rare works of art that it would be fair to call perfect, "Madame Bovary" has had an incal-culable influence on the literary culture that followed it. This translation, by Francis Steeg-muller, is acknowledged by common consensus as the definitive English rendition of Flaubert's text.