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Gustave Flaubert

1821–1880 · Novelist

Remember once more that pearls do not make the necklace; it is the thread.
Rappelle-toi encore une fois que les perles ne font pas le collier, c'est le fil.
Gustave Flaubert · letter to Louise Colet, 1853 · our translation

Read it in the source →

Gustave Flaubert wrote this in 1853 to the poet Louise Colet, while he was deep in Madame Bovary. Beautiful sentences are the pearls, he told her; what holds a book together is the thread, and that is where the labour goes.

Letter to Louise Colet ('Croisset, dimanche soir, 1 heure'), 1853 (undated; context places it in autumn 1853). Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance, nouvelle édition augmentée (Paris: Charpentier / Fasquelle, 1889).

The originals

Photograph of Gustave Flaubert, bald with a long drooping moustache — **The likeness**PHOTOGRAPHED BY THE NADAR STUDIO · c. 1865–69Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (19th-century Nadar studio photograph; BnF Gallica scan via Wikimedia Commons).

A manuscript page in dense handwriting, with lines struck through and notes crowding the margins — **Madame Bovary · the plans**A working plan for Madame Bovary in his own hand, written over, struck through and rewritten in the margins. He spent about five years on the book.Madame Bovary, plans and scenarios, autograph manuscript. Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica btv1b101017735), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.