Zola, Émile Edouard Charles Antoine

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 Rougon-Macquart 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).