MADAME BOVARY Moeurs de Province

Paris: Louis Conard, Libraire-Éditeur, 1902. First Printing, in the collection Oeuvres Complétes de Gustave Flaubert. A copy with FINE PROVENANCE having come from the books owned by John Dos Passos with his autograph ownership inscription and date to the initial blank leaf. A rare early inscription prior to the publication of his first novel. With an engraved frontispiece of Flaubert printed on Papier du Chine. 8vo, in a handsome French binding of three-quarter crushed blue morocco over blue marbled paper covered boards, the spine with raised bands, the compartments with multi-ruled gilt framed panels, two compartments lettered in gilt, marbled endleaves, top edge gilt. Original paper wrappers and original spine panel bound in at the front and rear of the volume. xxvi, 630, [1, Table des Matičres] pp. A handsome and pleasing copy, well preserved with only light evidence of age or use, the hinges are strong and the text-block is clean. A very collectable copy of an iconic work with excellent provenance. JOHN DOS PASSOS' COPY OF THE FIRST PRINTING IN THE COLLECTION OEUVRES COMPLETES DE GUSTAVE FLAUBERT of Flaubert's first published work. MADAME BOVARY is considered Flaubert's masterpiece and a masterpiece of 19th century literature. It is a seminal work of Realism and one of the most influential novels ever written. But, when it was first serialized in 'La Revue de Paris' between October and December of 1856, the novel was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors. The resulting trial, held in January 1857, made the story notorious. After Flaubert's acquittal in February it was published in book form and became a bestseller, but not one without controversy.
In style, the book makes a striking impression. The precision and brevity of detail is unexcelled, and the novel has often been described as a "perfect" work of fiction. It is among the most imitated novels ever written, critic James Woods once said, "...[its] influence is almost too familiar to be visible". Henry James once wrote, "Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment."
This copy was owned by John Dos Passos, the famous American novelist, essayist, biographer and activist. Dos Passos's pioneering works of nonlinear fiction were a major influence in the field. In particular Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz and Jean-Paul Sartre's Roads To Freedom trilogy show the influence of his methods. In a 1936 essay, "On John Dos Passos and 1919", Sartre referred to Dos Passos as "the greatest writer of our time." Norman Mailer said: "Those three volumes of U.S.A. make up the idea of a 'Great American Novel.'"
Dos Passos's major work is the U.S.A. trilogy, comprising The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936). Dos Passos used experimental techniques in these novels, incorporating newspaper clippings, autobiography, biography, and fictional realism to paint a vast landscape of American culture during the first decades of the 20th century.
Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He traveled widely as a young man, visiting Europe and the Middle East, where he learned about literature, art, and architecture. During World War I, he was an ambulance driver for American volunteer groups in Paris and Italy, before joining the U.S. Army Medical Corps.
In 1920, his first novel, One Man's Initiation: 1917, was published, and in 1925, his novel Manhattan Transfer became a commercial success. His U.S.A. trilogy, which consists of the novels The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936), was ranked by the Modern Library in 1998 as 23rd of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Written in experimental, non-linear form, the trilogy blends elements of biography and news reports to paint a landscape of early 20th-century American culture.
Beyond his writing, Dos Passos is known for his shift in political views. Following his experiences in World War I, he became interested in socialism and pacifism, which also influenced his early work. In 1928, he traveled to the Soviet Union, curious about its social and political experiment, though he left with mixed impressions. His experiences during the Spanish Civil War led to disillusionment about left-wing politics while also severing his relationship with fellow writer Ernest Hemingway. By the 1950s, his political views had changed dramatically, and he had become more conservative. His long-time friend journalist John Chamberlain believed that "Dos always remained a libertarian." Dos Passos once wrote: "I have come to think, especially since my trip to Spain, that civil liberties must be protected at every stage....The trouble with an all-powerful secret police in the hands of fanatics, or of anybody, is that once it gets started, there's no stopping it until it has corrupted the whole body politic. I am afraid that's what's happening in Russia."
Dos Passos was also the author of the influential study The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson (1954), about which fellow ex-radical Max Eastman wrote: "I think John Dos Passos has done a great service to his country and the free world by lending his talents to this task. He has revived the heart and mind of Jefferson, not by psychoanalytical lucubrations or soulful gush, but in the main by telling story after story of those whose lives and thoughts impinged upon his. And Jefferson's mind and heart are so livingly related to our problems today that the result seems hardly to be history." Wiki