Which translation of Madame Bovary should you read?

The first English Bovary, and still the free one. Eleanor Marx-Aveling worked from the French with real care, and for over a century hers was the version most English readers knew; it is clear, faithful in outline, and readable today. It is also Victorian, and it discreetly softens Flaubert’s harder edges and his sexual frankness, so the cold precision that makes him Flaubert is dulled a little. Later translators have corrected its slips. Choose it to read Bovary at no cost in a dependable, if gentler, English, not for the last word on Flaubert’s style.

The first English translation (1886); the ubiquitous public-domain text (Project Gutenberg #2413).

The exacting modern standard. Lydia Davis, a master of the sentence in her own right, tracks Flaubert’s syntax, rhythm, and word choice more closely than any earlier English version, refusing to prettify what he kept plain. The result can feel austere, and a few readers find it cool where they want warmth, but that coolness is the point: this is the closest English has come to Flaubert’s controlled surface. Her introduction on the ordeal of translating him is superb. The one to read if you care how the prose is actually built.

Published by Viking/Penguin (2010) to wide acclaim; frequently cited as the new benchmark English Bovary.

The warm, readable Penguin. Geoffrey Wall, Flaubert’s biographer, gives a fluent, characterful English that moves easily and keeps the irony alive without the near-clinical closeness of Davis. It is a touch freer with Flaubert’s exact shapes in exchange for readability, which many first-time readers will welcome, and his introduction is genuinely illuminating. If Davis feels too severe and Marx-Aveling too old-fashioned, Wall is the comfortable middle: modern, graceful, and trustworthy.

The Penguin Classics edition (1992, rev. 2003); a long-standing general-reader recommendation.