Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen, France in December 1821. The son of a surgeon, he is said to have begun writing at a very early age and attended school at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen. He moved to Paris in 1840 to study law but left intermittently to travel and, after a period of ill health, departed for good in 1846. Thereafter he devoted himself to writing and completed Madame Bovary in 1856. The novel was published to great scandal and acclaim, and Flaubert became a celebrated literary figure. His reputation was cemented with Salammbô (1862) and Sentimental Education (1869). He died in 1880, leaving his last work, Bouvard et Pécuchet, unfinished.