Zola, Émile Edouard Charles Antoine (1840–1902)

French novelist and social reformer. He made his name with Thérèse Raquin (1867),
a grim, powerful story of remorse. With
La Fortune des Rougon/The Fortune of the
Rougons
(1867) he began a series of some 20 naturalistic novels collectively known
as
Le Rougon-Macquart, portraying the fortunes of a French family under the Second
Empire. They include Le Ventre de Paris/The Underbelly of Paris (1873), Nana
(1880), and La Débâcle/The Debacle (1892). In 1898 he published J’accuse/I Accuse,
a pamphlet indicting the persecutors of Alfred Dreyfus, for which he was prosecuted
for libel but later pardoned.
Zola was born in Paris. He became a journalist and a clerk in the publishing house of
Hachette. He wrote literary and art criticisms and published several collections of
short stories, beginning with
Contes à Ninon/Stories for Ninon (1864). Having
discovered his real talent as a novelist, he produced the volumes of
Le RougonMacquart steadily over a quarter of a century, proving himself a master of realism.
Other titles in the series are
La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret/The Simple Priest (1875),
L’Assommoir/Drunkard (1878), Germinal (1885), La Terre/Earth (1888), La Bête
humaine/The Human Beast
(1890), and L’Argent/Money (1891). Among later novels
are the trilogy
Trois Villes/Three Cities (1894–98) (Lourdes (1894), Rome (1896),
Paris (1898)), and Les Quatre Evangiles/The Four Gospels (1899–1903) (Fécondité/
Fecundity
(1899), Travail/Work (1902), Vérité/Truth (1903), and the unfinished
Justice).

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