French · 1821–1880
Gustave Flaubert invented the modern novel with "Madame Bovary." The French author's painstaking pursuit of le mot juste—the exact word—transformed prose fiction into an art form demanding the precision of poetry. His story of a provincial doctor's wife destroyed by romantic illusions scandalized bourgeois France and established realism as literature's dominant mode. Flaubert's influence extends to every serious novelist who followed.