Gustave Flaubert's Daily Routine

Gustave Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary, the 1857 novel that got him tried for offending public morals and acquitted. At Croisset, his mother's house on the Seine, one day was much like the next.

Mason Currey's Daily Rituals has him wake at 10:00 AM and ring his bell cord, and only then could the household speak above a whisper. After the mail, a hot bath and a light meal at 11:00 AM, he walked with the family until 1:00 PM and taught his niece Caroline for an hour. He wrote from 2:00 PM until dinner at 7:00 PM and, after an evening with his mother, again from 9:30 PM to 3:00 AM, a day Currey first set out on his Daily Routines blog.

Adopt it if you want long, deep sessions and a household that runs like clockwork around them. You get 10.5 hours at the desk in 2 stretches, unhurried late mornings and family time at midday and after dinner. The 3:00 AM finish is an estimate, since in 1852 he told Louise Colet he stopped at 1:00 AM.