Overview

Penguin Drop Caps collect twenty-six stunning hardcovers-one for each letter of the alphabet-featuring cover art by lettering superstar Jessica Hische. It all begins with a letter. Penguin Drop Caps is a series of twenty-six collectable hardcover editions, each featuring a specially commissioned illustrated letter of the alphabet by type designer Jessica Hische. A collaboration between Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, whose series design encompasses a rainbow-hued spectrum across all twenty-six book spines, Penguin Drop Caps debuted with an 'A' for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, a 'B' for Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and a 'C' for Willa Cather's My ntonia, and now continues with a 'D' for Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, an 'E' for George Eliot's Middlemarch , and an 'F' for Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. F is for Flaubert. Beautiful but bored, Emma Bovary spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs in an effort to make her life everything she believes it should be. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debts, she takes drastic action, with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter. In this landmark translation of Gustave Flaubert's masterwork, award-winning writer and translator Lydia Davis honors the nuances and particulars of Flaubert's legendary prose style, giving new life in English to the book that redefined the novel as an art form.

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9780143123804

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Winner of the 2012 Fifty Books/Fifty Covers show, organized by Design Observer in association with AIGA and Designers & Books Winner of the 2014 Type Directors Club Communication Design Award Praise for Lydia Davis's translation of Madame Bovary [Flaubert's] masterwork has been given the English translation it deserves. --Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times Book Review Dazzling . . . translated to perfect pitch . . . [Davis has] left us the richer with this translation. . . . I'd certainly say it is necessary to have hers. --Jacki Lyden, NPR.org, Favorite Books of the Year One of the most important books of the year . . . Flaubert's strict, elegant, rhythmic sentences come alive in Davis's English. --James Wood, The New Yorker's Book BenchPraise for Penguin Drop Caps: [Penguin Drop Caps] convey a sense of nostalgia for the tactility and aesthetic power of a physical book and for a centuries-old tradition of beautiful lettering. --Fast Company Vibrant, minimalist new typographic covers.... Bonus points for the heartening gender balance of the initial selections. --Maria Popova, Brain Pickings The Penguin Drop Caps series is a great example of the power of design. Why buy these particular classics when there are less expensive, even free editions of Great Expectations? Because they're beautiful objects. Paul Buckley and Jessica Hische's fresh approach to the literary classics reduces the design down to typography and color. Each cover is foil-stamped with a cleverly illustrated letterform that reveals an element of the story. Jane Austen's A (Pride and Prejudice) is formed by opulent peacock feathers and Charlotte Bronte's B (Jane Eyre) is surrounded by flames. The complete set forms a rainbow spectrum prettier than anything else on your bookshelf. --Rex Bonomelli, The New York Times Drool-inducing. --Flavorwire Classic reads in stunning covers--your book club will be dying. --Redbook

Winner of the 2012 Fifty Books/Fifty Covers show, organized by Design Observer in association with AIGA and Designers & Books<br><br>Praise for Lydia Davis' translation of Madame Bovary <br> [Flaubert's] masterwork has been given the English translation it deserves. <br> --Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times Book Review <br><br> Dazzling . . . translated to perfect pitch . . . [Davis has] left us the richer with this translation. . . . I'd certainly say it is necessary to have hers. <br> --Jacki Lyden, NPR.org, Favorite Books of the Year<br><br> One of the most important books of the year . . . Flaubert's strict, elegant, rhythmic sentences come alive in Davis's English. <br> --James Wood, The New Yorker 's Book Bench<br>Praise for Penguin Drop Caps: <br><br> Vibrant, minimalist new typographic covers.... Bonus points for the heartening gender balance of the initial selections. <br> --Maria Popova, Brain Pickings <br><br> The Penguin Drop Caps series is a great example of the power of design. Why buy these particular classics when there are less expensive, even free editions of Great Expectations ? Because they're beautiful objects. Paul Buckley and Jessica Hische's fresh approach to the literary classics reduces the design down to typography and color. Each cover is foil-stamped with a cleverly illustrated letterform that reveals an element of the story. Jane Austen's A ( Pride and Prejudice ) is formed by opulent peacock feathers and Charlotte Bronte's B ( Jane Eyre ) is surrounded by flames. The complete set forms a rainbow spectrum prettier than anything else on your bookshelf. <br> --Rex Bonomelli, The New York Times <br><br> Drool-inducing. <br> -- Flavorwire <br><br> Classic reads in stunning covers--your book club will be dying. <br> -- Redbook

Author Information

Gustave Flaubert (Author) Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821, the son of a distinguished surgeon and a doctor's daughter. After three unhappy years of studying law in Paris, an epileptic attack ushered him into a life of writing. Madame Bovary won instant acclaim upon book publication in 1857, but Flaubert's frank display of adultery in bourgeois France saw him go on trial for immorality, only narrowly escaping conviction. Both Salammbo (1862) and The Sentimental Education (1869) were poorly received, and Flaubert's genius was not publicly recognized until Three Tales (1877). His reputation among his fellow writers, however, was more constant and those who admired him included Turgenev, George Sand, Victor Hugo and Zola. Flaubert's obsession with his art is legendary- he would work for days on a single page, obsessively attuning sentences, seeking always le mot juste in a quest for both beauty and precise observation. His style moved Edmund Wilson to say,'Flaubert, by a single phrase - a notation of some commonplace object - can convey all the poignance of human desire, the pathos of human defeat; his description of some homely scene will close with a dying fall that reminds one of great verse or music.' Flaubert died suddenly in May 1880, leaving his last work, Bouvard and Pecuchet, unfinished.

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