In September 1894 the French authorities intercepted a letter which they claimed emanated from a Jewish army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, which they claimed to be proof of espionage on behalf of Germany. Dreyfus was subsequently court-martialed and imprisoned on Devil's Island, and the efforts of his family to have him released provoked an anti-Semitic controversy that split the French intellectual world down the center. Most famous among the participants was France's greatest living novelist, Emile Zola. This book is the first to provide, in English translation, the full extent of Zola's...

Zola's prophetic celebration of unbridled commerce and consumerism, The Ladies' Paradise (Au bonheur des dames, 1883) recounts the frenzied transformations that made late nineteenth-century Paris the fashion capital of the world. The novel's capitalist hero, Octave Mouret, creates a giant department store that devours the dusty, outmoded boutiques surrounding it. Paralleling the story of commercial triumph is the love story between Mouret and the innocent Denise Baudu, who comes to work in The Ladies' Paradise. She provides the crucial link between Mouret and the three...

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Pomona Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Pauline Quenu, the daughter of shopkeepers in the Parisian business district Les Halles, is taken in by relatives on the coast of Normandy following the death of her parents. There, she is confronted with a gout-plagued host, his avaricious wife, and their lazy son, a morbid hypochondriac, whom she is expected to marry.

Serge Mouret, the younger son of Francois Mouret (see La Conquete de Plassans), was ordained to the priesthood and appointed Cure of Les Artaud, a squalid village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants he ministered with small encouragement. He had inherited the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him took the same form as in the case of his mother-a morbid religious enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. Brain fever followed, and bodily recovery left the priest without a mental past. Dr. Pascal Rougon, his uncle, hoping to save his reason, removed him from his accustomed...

His Excellency (French: Son Excellence Eugene Rougon) - From Zola's Rougon-Macquart Series. "Son Excellence Eugene Rougon is the one existing French novel which gives the reader a fair general idea of what occurred in political spheres at an important period of the Empire. It is a book for foreigners and particularly Englishmen to read with profit, for there are yet many among them who cherish the delusion that Napoleon III. was not only a good and true friend of England, but also a wise and beneficent ruler of France; and this, although his reign began with bloodshed and trickery, was...

"Judged by the standard of popularity, "Money" may be said to rank among M. Zolas notable achievements . . . This is not surprising, as the book deals with a subject of great interest to every civilized community."--Ernest Alfred Vizetelly.

Doctor Pascal is the twentieth and final novel of the Rougon-Macquart series by Emile Zola. This volume serves in many respects as an epilogue to the series -- but it's also a fine tale in its own right. Doctor Pascal, approaching old age, looks back on his life and finds himself asking whether he has made the right choices . . . and the answers he finds aren't always what you'd expect. Those who enjoy Zola's better-known novels will find much to appreciate here as well.

In Zola's 1873 tale, a prisoner who's escaped and taken refuge in Paris gets caught up in a Socialist cell -- and sees a Paris not to be found elsewhere. One of Zola's own favorites, "Paris" is a truly brilliant tale -- it shows us the city's underbelly, both figuratively and literally, for we see the enormous market (built in the 1850s) into which flowed great rivers of of food -- and from which flowed sewers of blood and putrefaction. This is a brilliant tale, and one as alive and memorable today as it was when Zola wrote it.

Emile Zola's "His Masterpiece" is the author's most autobiographical novel, based in part on his boyhood friendship with the painter Paul Cezanne. The painter of "His Masterpiece, " Claude Lantier, has much in common with Cezanne, as well as Manet -- the controversial painter of this period whose "realistic" work in some ways mirrors Zola's writing. Claude's friend Pierre Sandoz, the clerk and writer of the novel, is based closely on Zola himself. Not as fortunate in life as was Manet, Claude Lantier's art is misunderstood, and he struggles emotionally and financially. From his ill-fated...