(December) Outlines the theory of Naturalism in Le Roman expérimental.

1882 Publication of Pot-Bouille.

1883 (March) Publication of Au Bonheur desDames, a novel describing the life and intrigues of a large Paris department store.

1884 (March) Publication of La Joie de vivre.

1885 (March) Publication of Germinal, a novel set in a mining community in the north of France. The novel describes the dangers and hardships experienced by the miners and their revolt against their employers. The revolt is led by Étienne Lantier. Publication of French translation of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

1886 (April) Publication of L‘CEuvre, a novel describing the fortunes of Claude Lantier, a painter obsessed with radical new theories about art. The novel draws upon Zola’s close friendship with Cézanne. Cézanne, however, objects to the novel and ends their friendship. (Also April) The Prefect of the Département de l’Eure is murdered on a train travelling between Cherbourg and Paris. Publication of Gabriel Tarde’s La Criminalité comparée.

1887 (November) Publication of La Terre, a frank portrayal of peasant life. Five young writers, claiming to be ‘disciples’ of Zola, sign a manifesto in Le Figaro against the novel. Publication of the French translation of Lombroso’s L ’Uomo delinquente.

1888 (April) ‘Jack the Ripper’ commits the first of a series of murders in the East End of London. (October) Publication of Le Rêve. Jeanne Rozerot becomes Zola’s mistress. Publication in France of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

1889 (5 May) Begins writing La Bête humaine at Médan. (20 September) Birth of Denise, daughter of Zola and Jeanne Rozerot. (14 November) The first three chapters of La Bête humaine appear in La Vie populaire. International exhibition in Paris (‘Exposition Universelle’).

1890 (March) The final chapters of La Bête humaine appear in La Vie populaire, and the novel is published in book form by Charpentier.

1891 (March) Publication of L’Argent. (25 September) Birth of Jacques, son of Zola and Jeanne.

1892 (June) Publication of La Débâcle, an account of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war.

1893 (July) Publication of Le Docteur Pascal, the final novel in the Rougon-Macquart series. Zola visits London as the guest of the Institute of Journalists and attends a banquet in his honour at the Crystal Palace.

1894 Zola begins a trilogy of novels called Les Trois Villes about a priest who turns away from Catholicism in search of a more humanitarian creed. The trilogy comprises Lourdes (1894), Rome (1896) and Paris (1898). In December a Jewish officer in the French army, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, is convicted by court martial of spying and sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony on Devil’s Island.

1897New evidence suggests that Dreyfus has been wrongly convicted. Zola publishes three articles in Le Figaro demanding a retrial.

1898 (13 January) Zola’s article ‘J’accuse‘, written in support of Dreyfus and addressed to Félix Faure, President of the Republic, is published in L’Aurore. (21 February) Zola is found guilty of libelling the Minister of War and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 3,000francs. Zola appeals against this sentence but on 18 July, before the appeal is heard, he leaves France for London, where he spends a year in exile.

1899 (4 June) Returns to France. Begins a series of four novels, Les Quatre Évangiles. The series remained unfinished at his death.

1902 (29 September) Dies from asphyxiation as the result of the chimney of his bedroom stove being blocked. It is still widely believed that he was assassinated by anti-Dreyfusards.

1908 (4 June) Zola’s remains transferred to the Panthéon.

Introduction

This introduction refers to the novel by its original French
title, La Bête humaine. New readers are advised that the
introduction and the notes which appear at the end of the
book make details of the plot explicit.

La Bête humaine is the seventeenth in the series of twenty novels which Zola wrote under the collective title Les Rougon-Macquart. Zola’s overall purpose in this huge undertaking, as announced by its sub-title, was to depict ‘the Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire’. La Bête humaine contributes to this family history and continues Zola’s exploration of heredity and social conditioning, but it can be perfectly well read as a novel in its own right. Indeed it is as powerful and dramatic a narrative as any of the other novels in the series. It tells a story of sexual abuse, adultery, murder and suicide. This sombre catalogue of crime and misfortune is set against a background of deeply embedded political corruption which ensures that the voice of justice is silenced, that wickedness goes undetected and that violence is allowed to breed violence. The novel exposes a world of savagery and hypocrisy concealed behind a façade of progressive innovation and social refinement. Its bleak, uncompromising message challenged readers of Zola’s generation, as it challenges readers of today, to seek a clearer understanding of social malignity and to find better ways of dealing with it.

Zola began writing the novel on 5 May 1889 at his country house at Médan and finished it in Paris less than nine months later, on 18 January 1890. He had spent a considerable amount of time and effort in preparing the novel,1 yet the speed at which it was actually written is remarkable, especially when one considers that during this period he also moved house, continued to write articles for newspapers, was conducting a clandestine love affair and was called upon to do a stint of jury service at the Palais de Justice. The novel was first published in serialized form in the illustrated weekly magazine La Vie populaire, the first three chapters appearing on 14 November 1889 and the final instalments on 2 March 1890.