Which writers were Gustave Flaubert’s friends in his later years?

During his later years, Gustave Flaubert found solace and companionship among a circle of fellow writers. His close friends during this period included:

• George Sand1
• Ivan Turgenev12
• Émile Zola13
• Alphonse Daudet13
• Guy de Maupassant, who was the nephew of Flaubert’s early friend Alfred Le Poittevin and became Flaubert’s devoted disciple.41

Flaubert, along with several of these contemporaries—including Zola, Daudet, and Edmond Goncourt—often met in Paris during the 1870s. Because they frequently experienced failures in the theater, they humorously referred to themselves as auteurs sifflés ("hissed authors").32