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Introduction
7 February, 1857, saw the end of the trial involving the writer Gustave Flaubert, the owner, and the printer of La Revue de Paris. The three men had been accused of insulting public morals and offending decent manners by the serialised publication of the novel Madame Bovary. They were however to be acquitted. The public prosecutor had criticised the lascivious nature of the character Mme Bovary and the suggestive descriptions. The trial is however a good example of the way in which spectre of the censor hung over the press during the Second Empire.
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Commentary
– On the prosecutor’s speech (external link)
– On censorship in the nineteenth-century novel (external link)
A close-up on: the Flaubert Madame Bovary trial
7 February, 1857, saw the end of the trial involving the writer Gustave Flaubert, the owner, and the printer of La Revue de Paris. The three men had been accused of insulting public morals and offending decent manners by the serialised publication of the novel Madame Bovary.