Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), the son of a surgeon in Rouen, gave up studying law after a nervous illness and spent most of his life at his family's house at Croisset on the Seine. In 1849 he travelled for nearly two years through Egypt and the Middle East, a journey whose colours run through Salammbô.
He worked for years on each book, shouting his sentences aloud to test them, in search of the exact word. Madame Bovary brought him a trial and fame, and Sentimental Education followed. He was a mentor to Maupassant and a friend of Turgenev.