FIRST THOUGHTS: Persecution and prosecution in Zola and the Victorians

EMILE ZOLA is perhaps not as widely read today in English as he was in the past, less familiar to us now as readers than his friend and contemporary Gustave Flaubert.

However, in his day, his series of Rougon-Macquart novels, produced between 1871 and 1893, were hugely influential.

During this time, each of these novels made Zola progressively more and more popular, often written to articulate vehement indictments of the social ills of his time.