Zola was a leading figure of French literary naturalism; his novels were attacked and even banned for their frankness and sordid detail, and caused quite a bit of controversy in their day.

Émile grew up in Aix, later moved to Paris and took up a job in a publishing firm of Hachette, where he learned about the business and promotional sides of publishing and met several distinguished writers. About 1868-1869, when Zola was working as a free-lance journalist, he conceived the idea of writing a series of interlinked novels (Les Rougon-Macquart) tracing the lives of various members of a single family whose fortunes were to counterpoint the rise and fall of the Second Empire (1852-1870). Only with the seventh novel did Zola finally produce a best seller that made him one of the most talked of writers in France and one of the most bitterly assailed.

In 1898 he further incurred the wrath of officials when he published the open letter “J'Accuse,” in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, an Army officer who had been convicted of treason. Zola was sentenced to prison for libel, fled to England, and was granted amnesty a few months later. He died in Paris from carbon monoxide poisoning -- when the chimney on a bedroom stove stopped working -- a few months before Dreyfus was officially exonerated.