Émile Zola

Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright and poet, born in Paris. He grew up in Aix-en-Provence, returned to Paris as a young man, and worked in a publisher's office and as a critic before turning to fiction. He became the leading figure of naturalism, a style that treated the novel almost like a study of how heredity, money and surroundings shape human lives. His great achievement is the Rougon-Macquart cycle, twenty novels following one family through the Second Empire, in which he portrayed miners, shopkeepers, laundresses, financiers and farmers with unusual frankness. Zola was also a fearless public voice. In 1898 his open letter J'accuse defended Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer wrongly convicted of treason, and forced him into a brief exile in England. He died in Paris in 1902. His books remain admired for their social range, vivid detail and moral seriousness.