| Sumario: | Issues of authorship and censorship in France's Second Empire raised by the trial of Madame Bovary are explored. On January 29, 1857, Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, publisher Léon Laurent-Pichat, and printer Auguste-Alexis Pillet were charged with offending public morality and religion for publishing Madame Bovary in the Revue de Paris. In the face of repression by the regime of the Second Empire, Flaubert has long been viewed to have asserted, at least implicitly, the right of artistic freedom. However, the law on the press under which Madame Bovary was brought to trial targeted publication rather than authorship. Furthermore, most studies of the trial have failed to note that that there was practically no resistance to the state's contention that authors, printers, and publishers were responsible for their publication.
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