From a distinguished literary historian, a look at Gustave Flaubert and his correspondence with George Sand during France's "terrible year" - summer 1870 through spring 1871



In 1869, Gustave Flaubert published what he considered to be his masterwork novel, A Sentimental Education, which told a deeply human and deeply pessimistic story of the 1848 revolutions. The book was a critical and commercial flop. Flaubert was devastated.