December 15

In literary history

• 1856The final installment of Madame Bovary appeared in the Revue de Paris, and the French prosecutor moved immediately to charge Flaubert with outraging public morals. He was acquitted; the scandal ensured the novel sold through its first edition in days.

Writers born on December 15

• Betty Smith (1896)

The Daily Canon for December 15

Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden (1938).