Notes on Flaubert's Madame Bovary

Notes on Flaubert's Madame Bovary

Appearances of this title in the Modern Library are amazingly complex. Beyond what's listed below, it exists in three different typesettings with numerous reset title pages.

Barry Neavill has in his collection 19 variants of Madame Bovary illustrating the evolution of that title from 1917 to 1978. He points out that "[b]ibliographers would organize ML printings of Flaubert's Madame Bovary into four editions: (1) printings of the Aveling translation from the original ML typesetting in 1917, (2) printings of the Aveling translation from the new typesetting that Cerf and Klopfer commissioned in the late 1920s [printed in 1927 - ED]; (3) printings of the Steegmuller translation made from 1957 RH plates; (4) printings made from the new typesetting made for the relaunched ML in the early 1990s."

 This title was one of several that had private printings done by The Jewish Daily Forward of New York in around 1924 (style 3 binding).

EDITION POINT: The DJ of the first printing of the 1957 Steegmuller edition has a yellow band across the bottom of the front panel with the text "In a new and definitive translation by FRANCIS STEEGMULLER"


First copyright page text:     [ none ]

First binding style:     1

First inverse DJ number:     [ none -- B-L Catalog C3 ]

Dates in print:     1917 - 1950 (Aveling translation)
                              1950 - 1957 (Aveling translation w/Peyre intro)
                              1957 - 1975 (Steegmuller translation)

Toledano number:     028.1 (Aveling translation, no intro)
                                     028.2 Aveling translation w/Peyre into)

                                     028.3 (Steegmuller translation)


GT42

Confirmed buckram sighting?      yes


Intro author:     None in the first edition
                           Henri Peyre (1950)
                           Francis Steegmuller (1957)

Genre:     Novel

Original language:      French

Translator:      Eleanor Marx Aveling (1917 - 1957)
                          Francis Steegmuller (1957 - 1990)


Thanks to the contributors:

Henry Toledano Barry Neavill Bill Hornick

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