Gustave Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen, France, to Achille Cleophas (a physician) and Caroline (Fleuriot) Flaubert. Flaubert lived with his family in an apartment in the hospital where his father served as chief surgeon and professor. Stirling Haig, in his article on Flaubert in Dictionary of Literary Biography, suggests that Flaubert, who was exposed to pain and suffering at the hospital throughout his childhood, developed a "gloomy perspective on life and death" that he would later weave into the fabric of his works.

Flaubert began writing in his childhood. By 1832, he had completed two texts: the seriousminded Eloge de Corneille (Tribute to Pierre Corneille, the seventeenth-century playwright) and the juvenile La Belle Explication de la Fameuse Constipation (The Fine Explanation of the Famous Constipation). While a student at the Collège Royal de Rouen, Flaubert devoured the classics and staged plays by Victor...