Flaubert began writing Madame Bovary on the evening of 19 September 1851; on the last day of May 1856 he sent the final manuscript to his friend Maxime Du Camp for publication in the Revue de Paris. His novel thus represents almost five years of a labour of composition that has become the very example of literary creation, of the vocation of the writer as artist. Two people shared in something of the trials of this labour: Louis Bouilhet, the Rouen schoolfriend, himself a poet, to whom the work in progress was read on Sundays; Louise Colet, the mistress, herself a poet and author, the recipient in Paris of the expression of Flaubert's passion of writing as recorded in more than 180 extant letters from 1851 onwards. When they broke up in 1854 and the letters came to an end, Flaubert was at the episode of the club-foot, the terms of the novel were set. Madame Bovary, indeed, was written to the rhythm of their relationship; or rather, the relationship was carried on to the rhythm of its writing, with meetings as and when this and then that section was completed; ‘We won't see each other before…’ became a constant refrain.

To write to Colet was to write to ‘the eiderdown on which my heart comes to rest and the handy desk on which my mind can open’ (27 February 1853, C). The letters are lengthy, mostly written late at night after the hours of struggle with the novel, as a respite from style: ‘it's so easy to chatter on about the beautiful but to say in good style “close the door” or “he wanted to sleep” requires more genius than giving all the literature courses in the world’ (28 June 1853, C). If in the first three months or so of 1853 Flaubert drafted thirty-nine pages of Madame Bovary, in the same period he wrote some twentythree letters to Colet; that of 27 March, for example, running to well over 4,000 words. Untiringly he set out his ideas on the novel in hand and on art in general: ‘one must esteem a woman, to write her such things as these’ (23 October 1851, C).