Produced by Dagny and Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.) ÉMILE ZOLA NOVELIST AND REFORMER AN ACCOUNT OF HIS LIFE & WORK BY ERNEST ALFRED VIZETELLY ILLUSTRATED BY PORTRAITS, VIEWS, & FAC-SIMILES JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD LONDON & NEW YORK MDCCCCIV TO HIS MEMORY _"If, upon your side, you have the testimony of your conscience, and, against you, that of the multitude, take comfort, rest assured that time will do justice."--_DIDEROT PREFACE This book is an attempt to chronicle the chief incidents in the life of the late Émile Zola, and to set out the various aims he had in view at different periods of a career which was one of the most strenuous the modern world has known. Virtually all his work is enumerated in the following pages, which, though some are given to argument and criticism, will be found crowded with facts. The result may not be very artistic, but it has been partially my object to show what a tremendous worker Zola was, how incessantly, how stubbornly, he practised the gospel which he preached. An attempt has been made also to show the growth of humanitarian and reforming passions in his heart and mind, passions which became so powerful at last that the "novelist" in Zola seemed as nothing. Yet I do not think I can be charged with having neglected the literary side of his career. It is that which bulks most largely in the present volume, and that I think is as it should be, for while Zola was certainly, and in some respects essentially, a Reformer, the pen was the weapon with which he strove to effect his purposes. Designed more particularly for British and American readers, the book contains some passages which I should have abbreviated--omitted perhaps--if I had been addressing a French audience. And some subjects, which, in that case, I might have treated more fully, have here been dealt with briefly. For instance, though I have enumerated all the plays that Zola wrote, and most of those founded by others on his works, I have not entered into any real discussion of his views respecting the stage, or of his indirect influence on it in France. I have thought it sufficient to indicate that such influence was exercised. A full examination of Zola's relations with the stage would have materially increased the length of a work which is long already, and which I have been anxious to keep within the scope of one volume--a desire which has made my task more difficult than it would have been had I used my materials in all their fulness. But I am distinctly of opinion that biographies in several volumes have nowadays little chance of surviving, even for a moderate number of years.