Flaubert, Gustave

The French author Gustave Flaubert, the son of a prominent surgeon, grew up in Rouen. Both his parents were atheists, and, although generally very conservative, Flaubert inherited their dislike of the Church and clergy. In 1840, he began to study law at the Sorbonne in Paris. After a couple of years he began to have epileptic fits and was forced, or used these as an excuse, to abandon his studies (which he did not enjoy), move back in with his parents in their large house at Croisset near Rouen and do what he wanted to do most of all – to take up writing again (he had started to write at the age of seventeen). Apart from occasionally spending time in Paris, where he had an apartment, he spent the rest of his life in the family home.