The Dream' is the sixteenth volume in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series of novels of the Second Empire. Perhaps as a reaction to the criticism received by his preceding books - works of almost unrelenting, gritty realism - Zola here shows that his talents range beyond describing the corruption and oppression of the second, farcical, Napoleonic regime, and the daily struggle for survival. Here he portrays the very heart and feelings of an idealistic young girl, raised in a cloistered corner of a disappearing France, and now emerging from a childhood of security, love and certainty, into beautiful...