ÉMILE ZOLA, born in Paris in 1840, was brought up at Aix-en-Provence in an atmosphere of struggling poverty after the death of his father in 1847. He was educated at the Collège Bourbon at Aix and then at the Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris. After failing the baccalauréat twice and taking menial clerical employment, he joined the newly founded publishing house Hanchette in 1862 and quickly rose to become head of publicity. Having published his first novel in 1865 he left Hanchette the following year to become a full-time journalist and writer. Thérèse Raquin appeared in 1867 and caused a scandal, to which he responded with his famous Preface to the novel’s second edition in 1868 in which he laid claim to being a ‘Naturalist’. That same year he began work on a series of novels intended to trace scientifically the effects of heredity and environment in one family: Les Rougon-Macquart. This great cycle eventually contained twenty novels, which appeared between 1871 and 1893. In 1877 the seventh of these L’Assommoir (The Drinking Den), a study of alcoholism in working-class Paris, brought him abiding wealth and fame. On completion of the Rougon-Macquart series he began a new cycle of novels, Les Trois Villes: Lourdes, Rome, Paris (1894–8), a violent attack on the Church of Rome, which led to another cycle, Les Quatre Évangiles. While his later writing was less successful, he remained a celebrated figure on account of the Dreyfus case, in which his powerful interventions played an important part in redressing a heinous miscarriage of justice. His marriage in 1870 had remained childless, but his happy, public relationship in later life with Jeanne Rozerot, initially one of his domestic servants, brought him a son and a daughter. He died in mysterious circumstances 1902 the victim of an accident or murder.
ROBIN BUSS is a writer and translator who works as a freelance journalist and as television critic for The Times Educational Supplement. He studied at the University of Paris, where he took a degree and doctorate in French literature. He is part-author of the article ‘French Literature’ in Encyclopaedia Britannica and has published critical studies of works by Vigny and Cocteau, and three books on European cinema, The French through Their Films (1988), Italian Films (1989) and French Film Noir (1994). He has translated a number of other volumes for Penguin, including Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames.
ÉMILE ZOLA
The Drinking Den
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
ROBIN BUSS
BookishMall.com
BookishMall.com
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2 April Emile Zola born in Paris, the son of an Italian engineer, Francesco Zola, and of Françoise-Emilie Aubert.
1843
The family moves to Aix-en-Provence, which will become the town of ‘Plassans’ in the Rougon-Macquart novels.
1847
Francesco Zola dies, leaving the family nearly destitute.
1848
The rule of King Louis-Philippe (the July Monarchy, which came to power in 1830) is overthrown and the Second Republic declared. Zola starts school. Karl Marx publishes Manifesto of the Communist Party.
1851
The Republic is dissolved after the coup d’état of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte who in the following year proclaims himself emperor as Napoleon III. Start of the Second Empire, the period that will provide the background for Zola’s novels in the Rougon-Macquart cycle.
1852
Zola is enrolled at the Collège Bourbon, in Aix, where he starts a close friendship with the painter Paul Cézanne.
1858
The family moves back to Paris and Zola is sent to the Lycée Saint-Louis. His school career is undistinguished and he twice fails the baccalauréat.
1860
The start of a period of hardship as Zola tries to scrape a living together by various kinds of work, while engaging in his first serious literary endeavours, mainly as a poet. These years saw the height of the rebuilding programme undertaken by Baron Haussmann, Prefect of Paris from 1853 to 1869, which is reflected in several of Zola’s novels, including The Drinking Den.
1862
Zola joins the publisher Hachette, and in a few months becomes the firm’s head of publicity.
1863
Makes his début as a journalist.
1864
Zola’s first literary work, the collection of short stories, Contes à Ninon, appears.
1865
Publishes his first novel, La Confession de Claude. Meets his future wife, Gabrielle-Alexandrine Meley; they marry in 1870.
1866
Leaves Hachette. From now on, he lives by his writing.
1867
Publication of Thérèse Raquin, the story of how a working-class woman and her lover kill her husband, but are afterwards consumed by guilt. In the Preface to the second edition (1868), Zola declares that he belongs to the literary school of ‘Naturalism’.
1868-9
Zola develops the outline of his great novel-cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart, which he subtitles ‘The Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire’. It is founded on the latest theories of heredity. He signs a contract for the work with the publisher Lacroix.
1870
The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War leads in September to the fall of the Second Empire. Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie go into exile in England and the Third Republic is declared. Paris is besieged by Prussian forces. La Fortune des Rougon starts to appear in serial form.
1871
Publication in book form of La Fortune des Rougon, the first novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle. After the armistice with Prussia, a popular uprising in March threatens the overthrow of the government of Adolphe Thiers, which flees to Versailles. The radical Paris Commune takes power until its bloody repression by Thiers in May; the events would have great importance for the Socialist Left.
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