French
author, who founded the naturalist movement. Zola was born in Paris on April 2, 1840, the son of an Italian civil engineer. After his father's early death, he grew up in poverty. His first job was as a clerk in a publishing house. After 1865 he was able to support himself by writing verse, short stories, and literary and art criticism.
Zola's first important novel, Thérèse Raquin (1867), is a vivid psychological study of murder and passion. Later, inspired by scientific experiments in heredity and environment, Zola determined to produce a new type of novel that would probe deeply into every area of human existence and document every social ill, no matter how politically sensitive. He called his new school of fiction naturalism, and he wrote a series of 20 novels between 1871 and 1893, under the generic title Les Rougon-Macquart (1871-93; trans. 1885-1907), to illustrate his theories in terms of the saga of one family. Through painstaking research he produced an arresting and complete picture of French life, particularly of Paris, in the late 19th century. He was, however, criticized for obscenity and for exaggerating the frequent criminality and pathological behavior of the lower classes.
Several of the books, dealing with five generations of the Rougon-Macquart family, became famous. Among the novels in the series are L'assommoir (The Dram Shop, 1877), on alcoholism; Nana (1880), on prostitution and the demimonde; Pot-bouille (The Stew, 1882), on middle-class pretensions; Germinal (1885), on coal mining; La bête humaine (The Human Beast, 1890), on railroading; and La débâcle (The Downfall, 1892), on the collapse of the Second Empire. These books, which Zola characterized as social documents, greatly influenced the later naturalistic development of the novel. His own later novels, written after 1893, are less objective, more evangelistic, and consequently less effective as novels. They include the series The Three Cities (3 vol., 1894-98; trans. 1894-98), comprising Lourdes (1894), Rome (1896), and Paris (1898). Zola also produced volumes of literary criticism in which he attacked his literary opponents, the romantics. The best of his critical writing is the essay "The Experimental Novel" (1880; trans. 1893) and the collection of essays Les romanciers naturalistes (The Naturalistic Fiction Writers, 1881).
In January 1898, Zola wrote an open letter, published in the Paris newspaper L'Aurore. This was the famous "J'accuse" ("I accuse") letter, in which Zola attacked French officials for their persecution of the French artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus, who had been found guilty of treason. Zola died in Paris on September 29, 1902.
Most of Zola's works are available in English translation, and many of his novels have been adapted into plays as well as into motion pictures.