(1840-1902) French novelist and critic (author of Germinal; defender of Alfred Dreyfus.
Edouard Charles Antoine (1840-1902) French novelist and social reformer. With La Fortune des Rougon/The Fortune of the Rougons 1867 he began a series of some 20 naturalistic novels, portraying the fortunes of a French family under the Second Empire. They include Le Venter 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 Dreyfus, for which he was prosecuted for libel but later pardoned.
Born in Paris, Zola was a journalist and clerk until his Contes ŕ Ninon/Stories for Ninon 1864 enabled him to devote himself to literature. Some of the titles in the Fortune des Rougon series are La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret/The Simple Priest 1875, L’Assommoir/Drunkard 1878, Germinal 1885, and La Terre/Earth 1888. Among later novels are the trilogy Trois Villes/Three Cities 1894–98, and Fécondité/Fecundity 1899.