born April 2, 1840, Paris, France
died Sept. 28, 1902, Paris
French novelist and critic.
Raised in straitened circumstances, Zola worked at a Paris publishing house for several years during the 1860s while establishing himself as a writer. In the gruesome novel Thérèse Raquin (1867), he put his "scientific" theories of the determination of character by heredity and environment into practice for the first time. These ideas established him as the founder of naturalism in literature. In 1870 he began the ambitious project for which he is best known, the Rougon-Macquart Cycle (187193), a sequence of 20 novels documenting French life through the lives of the violent Rougon family and the passive Macquarts. It includes L'Assommoir (1877), a study of alcoholism that is among his most successful and popular novels; Nana (1880); Germinal (1885), his masterpiece; and La Bête humaine (1890). Among his other works are two shorter novel cycles and treatises explaining his theories on art, including The Experimental Novel (1880). He is also notable for his involvement in the Alfred Dreyfus affair, especially for his open letter, "J'accuse" (1898), denouncing the French army general staff. He died under suspicious circumstances, overcome by carbon-monoxide fumes in his sleep.