Uncensored 'Madame Bovary' goes online

Some 4,500 pages of French writer Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary have been posted online, including the novel's censored parts. According to The Independent, the released pages includes the ones cut or revised by the author as well as the original 500 pages of the published version. Some 130 volunteers from around the world helped transcribe the texts which are available at bovary.fr. "No one person in a single lifetime could have achieved what they have," said project leader Yvan Leclerc, a professor at the University of Rouen. "It can take between three and 10 hours to decipher a single page of Flaubert's writing." The site also contains images of the Flaubert manuscripts and some interactive controls which help users re-instate the passages edited or cut by Flaubert and his publishers. When Madame Bovary first appeared in serial form in La Revue de Paris, Flaubert and his publishers were prosecuted for "outraging public and religious morals." Flaubert was acquitted, however, and his novel became a bestseller that continued to be one of the most influential novels ever written.