Emile Zola was born in 1840 in Paris, though he spent much of his childhood in Provence, where he became friends with Paul Cézanne. His family was poor, especially after the death of his father. His mother hoped he would practice law, but Zola proved to be not a very good student.

Zola is considered the founder and leading practitioner of a literary movement known as Naturalism. His most important work is the Rougon-Macquart cycle, a series of some 20 novels about two branches of a family--one from the petite bourgeoisie and the other consisting of smugglers and poachers and alcoholics. Zola focused on the suffering of people in his era, examining the mining industry, prostitution, gin mills, and the like.

Having followed the Dreyfus affair and Zola's role in denouncing it, Mark Twain wrote to Zola that "Ecclesiastical and military courts made up of cowards, hypocrites and time-servers can be bred at the rate of a million a year, but it takes five centuries to breed a Joan of Arc and a Zola."