<ul><li><strong>Madame Bovary,</strong> originally published as&nbsp;Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners&nbsp;(French:&nbsp;Madame Bovary: Mœurs de province, is the&nbsp;debut novel&nbsp;of&nbsp;French&nbsp;writer&nbsp;Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856. The eponymous character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.</li><li>When the novel was first serialized in&nbsp;Revue de Paris&nbsp;between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, public prosecutors attacked the novel for obscenity. The resulting trial in January 1857 made the story notorious. After Flaubert's acquittal on 7 February 1857,&nbsp;Madame Bovary&nbsp;became a bestseller in April 1857 when it was published in two volumes. A seminal work of&nbsp;literary realism, the novel is now considered Flaubert's masterpiece, and one of the most influential literary works in history. The British critic&nbsp;James Wood&nbsp;writes: "Flaubert established, for good or ill, what most readers think of as modern realist narration, and his influence is almost too familiar to be visible."</li></ul>