Émile Zola (1840–1902)

Émile Zola, French novelist, was born in Paris on the 2nd of April 1840, his father being an engineer, part Italian and part Greek, and his mother a Frenchwoman. The father seems to have been an energetic visionary man, who, dying while his only son was a little lad left to his family no better provision than a lawsuit against the municipality of the town of Aix. It was at Aix, which figures as Plassans in so many of his novels, that the boy received the first part of his education. Thence he proceeded, in 1838, to Paris, where, as later at Marseilles, he failed to obtain his bachelor's degree. Then came a few years of terrible poverty, but at the beginning of 1862 he obtained a clerkship, at the modest salary of a pound a week, in the house of Hachette the publisher. Meanwhile he was writing apace, but nothing of particular merit. His first book, "Contes a Ninon," appeared on the 24th of October 1864, and attracted some attention, and in January 1866 he determined to abandon clerking and take to literature. Vigorous and aggressive as a critic, his articles on literature and art in Villemessant's paper "L'Événement" created a good deal of interest. So did the gruesome but powerful novel, "Therese Raquin." Meanwhile, with characteristic energy, Zola was projecting something more important: the creation of a world of his own, like that of Balzac's "Comedie Humaine"--the history of a family in its various ramifications during the Second Empire. The history of this family, the Rougon-Macquart, was to be told in a series of novels containing a scientific study of heredity--science was always Zola's ignis fatuus--and a picture of French life and society. The first novel of the series, "La Fortune des Rougon," appeared in book form at the and of 1871. It was followed by five more--all books unquestionable of immense ability and in a measure successful, but not great popular successes. Then came "L'Assomoir," the epic of drink, and the author's fortune was made. Edition followed edition. He became the most discussed, the most read, the most bought novelist in France--the sale of "L'Assomoir" being even exceeded by that of "Nana" and "La Debâcle. There are some twenty novels in the Rougon-Macquart series, the second half of which includes the powerful novels "Germinal" and "La Terre." Zola also wrote a series of three romances on cities, novels on the "gospels" of population and work, and other things. These books are based on study and observation, the novels are crowded with characters. The whole is a gigantic _opus_, the fruit of immense labour, of an admirable tenacity--so many pages written, morning after morning without intermission, during some thirty years. Zola was instrumental in the Dreyfus affair, instigating with his letter "J'accuse." On the morning of the 29th of September 1902 Zola was found dead in the bedroom of his Paris house, having been accidentally asphyxiated by the fumes from a defective flue. He received a public funeral, at which Captain Dreyfus was present. Zola's literary position would have more than qualified him for the French Academy, but he was several times a candidate in vain.