This book contain collection of 2 books
1. Emile Zola, by William Dean Howells
2. Nana [1880]
3. The Fortune of the Rougons [1871]
4. Nana [1880]
About the Author
Émile Zola, 1840-1902
Influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism and a major figure in the political liberalization of France.
During his early years, Émile Zola wrote several short stories and essays, four plays and three novels. Among his early books was Contes à Ninon, published in 1864. With the publication of his sordid autobiographical novel La Confession de Claude [1865] attracting police attention, Hachette fired him. His novel Les Mystères de Marseille appeared as a serialized story in 1867.
After his first major novel, Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola started the long series called Les Rougon Macquart, about a family under the Second Empire. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol, and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the industrial revolution. The series examines two branches of a single family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts, for five generations. As he described his plans for the series, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world."
