Gustave Flaubert

A mysterious nervous collapse, possibly epilepsy, ended Flaubert's law studies at twenty-two and sent him back to his family's house at Croisset, near Rouen, where he lived with his mother for most of his life and wrote at a monastic, agonized pace, searching each sentence for le mot juste, the one exact word.

Madame Bovary, serialized in 1856, prompted a government obscenity trial the following year; the acquittal made the book a sensation and Flaubert reluctantly famous. Sentimental Education (1869), his bleaker account of a generation's failed ideals, sold poorly and wounded him. He died of a stroke at Croisset in 1880, mid-sentence on an unfinished novel, having mentored the young Maupassant as his last act of literary generosity.