The almost three thousand pages of The Family Idiot defies adequate summary or paraphrase. I suspect that any such attempt would leave out more of what is important than what it contained. Thus, Hazel Barnes in her comprehensive study, Sartre and Flaubert, has not attempted that task, although she has accomplished a great deal. Still, each book should be a separate enterprise, and I must here attempt to fulfill my own promise of providing a study of the entire work. What shall this be like? The most that I plan to offer my reader is a “taste,” as it were, of the overall structure of Sartre's massive work, whose aim is simply to understand the man Gustave Flaubert and his writings.

THE PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Let us begin simply with the physical appearance of work. It was published by the French publisher Gallimard as L' Idiot de la Famille: Gustave Flaubert de 1821 à 1857, appearing in three large volumes, the first two in 1971 and the third in 1972 – revised editions followed in 1988). A projected fourth volume was never completed, and Sartre's notes on this volume – which were to discuss Madame Bovary – appear to be mere suggestions and not at all as complete as Critique 2. In her excellent translation into English, Carol Cosman divided the three volumes into five – volume 1 is the same as the first Gallimard volume; volumes 2, 3, and 4 give her translation of the original second Galllimard volume, and volume 5 is her translation of the third Gallimard volume.