FLAUBERT Gustave. Madame Bovary. Mœurs de province. Paris, Michel Lévy Frères, 1857; 2 vol. in-12, contemporary bindings in green half-chagrin, spine ribbed and decorated, speckled edges. First edition. The author, brought before the Tribunal de la Seine for offences against public decency, was acquitted after a resounding trial. A copy of the first printing with the dedicatee's name misspelled as Senart for Senard. A fine copy, without the Michel Lévy advertising catalogue generally bound in at the end. An autograph letter from Flaubert has been added at the head (1 p. in-8, [1872]) to "mon Loulou". Loulou is Flaubert's niece, Caroline Commanville, to whom the writer transferred his affection for his late sister. Flaubert had arrived in Croisset, his "irascibility turning to insanity", he had slept in his room, and the house "stank violently". The letter is accompanied by an ex-dono on an autograph note signed by Heeckeren on 11 January 1931: "My dear friend, Loulou, it was Flaubert's niece who gave this autograph to my mother; it was she too who wrote in pencil 1872 (...). This will be a number to add to your collection that we were looking at the other evening...".