“Emma Bovary’s Eyes” (Granta 7: Best of Young British Novelists, 1983)


Notes on this edition: Granta: Best of Young British Novelists, issue 7 (Granta, 1983). ISSN: 0017-3231; ISBN: 0140068333. Edited by Bill Buford and distributed by Penguin Books.

First appearance of Julian Barnes’s story “Emma Bovary’s Eyes” which later appeared as a chapter in his novel Flaubert’s Parrot. The Granta version contains some textual differences from the finished novel and appears on pages 59-67.

Other authors featured in this collection include: Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Ursula Bentley, William Boyd, Buchi Emecheta, Maggie Gee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alan Judd, Adam Mars-Jones, Ian McEwan, Shiva Naipaul, Philip Norman, Christopher Priest, Salman Rushdie, Lisa de Terán, Clive Sinclair, Graham Swift, Rose Tremain, A. N. Wilson.

Flaubert et une gouvernante anglaise: à la recherhe de Juliet Herbert (Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2011; Preface)


Notes on this edition: Flaubert et une gouvernante anglaise: à la recherhe de Juliet Herbert. Hermia Oliver. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2011. Pp. 264. Translated by Gillian Pink.

Preface by Julian Barnes; printed in French (pp. 7-12) and English (pp. 12-16). The French translation of Barnes’s preface by Catriona Seth.

The book Flaubert and an English Governess was originally published in English in 1980 by Oxford University Press.

Dictionary of Received Ideas (Syrens, 1994; Preface)


Notes on this edition: Flaubert, Gustave. The Dictionary of Received Ideas. London: Syrens, 1994. Translated by Geoffrey Wall. Preface by Julian Barnes (pp. v-xi).

Syrens is a division of Penguin books, and they released this small, thin paperback edition of Flaubert’s The Dictionary of Received Ideas in 1994. They Syrens series included several titles of note, including James Fenton’s slim publication On Statues (1995) and Proust’s On Reading (1995).

For the Flaubert edition, Julian Barnes provides a preface in the format of a dictionary with one entry per letter. This format resembles (but is entirely different in content from) the dictionary chapter in his novel Flaubert’s Parrot.

Flaubert & Louise: Letters & Impressions (Charles Hobson, 1988; Prospectus)


Notes on this edition: In 1988, artist Charles Hobson created an limited edition artists’ book titled Flaubert & Louise: Letters & Impressions. The contents of the book include letters written by Gustave Flaubert to his lover Louise Colet. Also included are excerpts from Julian Barnes’s novel Flaubert’s Parrot in which he fictionalized Colet’s voice in a chapter titled, “Louise Colet’s Version”. Hobson merges Flaubert’s real letters with Barnes’s fictional text to create a sense of an exchange between the couple.

The item presented in the photos is a prospectus for the artists’ book prepared at the time of the publication of the work in 1988. 21.5 x 14 cm.

A copy of the original artists’ book currently sells for $3,000 on Hobson’s website. Chronicle Books also issued a spiral bound book by Hobson titled Paris Encounters that contains a section devoted to his artistic creation Flaubert & Louise. Charles Hobson writes about his creative process for this work in an exhibition catalog in 2002: http://www.charleshobson.com/Hobson_Catalog.pdf