The Man Who Believed Style Was Destiny: Carlini Classics Brings Gustave Flaubert Back Into Print

July 28, 2026

A new seven-book series, with covers by Jenny Lim, pairs the master of French realism with English and original-French editions

NEW YORK, NY — July 28, 2026 — Casa Carlini's Carlini Classics imprint today announced a new series dedicated to Gustave Flaubert, the 19th-century French writer whose obsessive precision with language helped define the modern novel. The series arrives in both English translation and the original French, reintroducing a body of work that ranges far beyond the novel most readers already know.

Flaubert, born in Rouen in 1821, is best remembered for Madame Bovary (1857), the novel whose frank portrayal of a provincial wife's affairs and disillusionment provoked an obscenity trial and helped establish him as a founder of literary realism. But his catalog is wider and stranger than that reputation suggests: the ancient-world brutality of Salammbô, the wistful failure of Sentimental Education, the fevered visions of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, and the mordant comedy of Bouvard and Pécuchet all show a writer circling the same questions from different angles, how easily people mistake illusion for feeling, and how much discipline it takes to describe that mistake honestly.

The new Carlini Classics series collects that range in one place: Madame Bovary, Salammbô, Sentimental Education(published in French as L'Éducation sentimentale), The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Bouvard and Pécuchet, Three Tales, and Over Strand and Field. Three Tales, Flaubert's own collection of three short stories—“A Simple Heart,” “The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller,” and “Herodias”—shows a different side of his craft, compressing his devotion to exact language into a shorter form. Over Strand and Field offers yet another register: a travelogue recounting a journey through Brittany, where Flaubert turns his eye for detail on real landscapes and towns rather than invented characters. French-language editions of each title are also being released for readers who want Flaubert's prose unmediated by translation.

Cover designs for the series come from Jenny Lim, a recent graduate of California State University, East Bay. Her artwork draws on painterly imagery, muted earth tones, and restrained typography, giving the seven covers a shared visual identity, one that reads as sensual and a little haunted, formal in mood but distinctly contemporary in execution.

“Flaubert believed style was not decoration but destiny,” said Charles Carlini, founder of Casa Carlini. “He wrote about desire, failure, fantasy, and self-deception with such control that even his harshest truths become beautiful. These books still feel modern because they understand how often people are undone by the stories they tell themselves.”

With this series, Carlini Classics aims to place Flaubert's formal rigor and moral seriousness in front of new readers, and to show that a writer this unsparing about his characters and his era still has plenty to say about ours.

The Carlini Classics Flaubert series is available now through Casa Carlini, major booksellers, and Amazon.

About Carlini Classics

Carlini Classics publishes thoughtfully designed editions of essential literary works, bringing enduring voices into conversation with contemporary readers.