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Émile Zola

Émile Zola

1840 CE–1902 CE · Novelist · Paris

Émile Zola was a French novelist and journalist, the leading figure of literary naturalism. His twenty-volume cycle Les Rougon-Macquart traced one family across the Second Empire, with works including Germinal, L'Assommoir, Nana, and La Bête humaine, applying a documentary, quasi-scientific method to social life. Raised largely in Aix-en-Provence, where he befriended the painter Paul Cézanne, he returned to Paris and rose from clerk to celebrated author. In 1898 his open letter "J'Accuse…!," defending Alfred Dreyfus, brought a conviction for criminal libel and a period of exile in England. He died in Paris in 1902 from carbon monoxide poisoning.

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Paris

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In Paris at the same time

Stendhal, Gioachino Rossini, Heinrich Heine, Eugène Delacroix, Auguste Comte, Honoré de Balzac

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