Zola

Émile Zola, the French novelist who lived from 1840 to 1902, is portrayed here as a rare figure who combined political courage, intellectual influence, and literary achievement. His cycle of twenty novels widened what fiction could accomplish for generations of writers, and his public stands helped give shape to the idea of the modern intellectual.

For all his fame, Zola kept much of his inner life hidden, which has left him strangely little known. Frederick Brown draws on the new edition of Zola's letters, which adds hundreds of documents, to reconstruct his life in fine detail and with careful attention to nuance. The book took the author about fifteen years to research and write.

The biography also paints the social, political, and intellectual world of nineteenth-century France through which Zola moved, making it a history of his era as well as a life story.