Paul Alexis was a novelist, journalist, and dramatist, one of the naturalistes, and a friend of Emile Zola. This volume brings together for the first time the 229 letters still in existence from him to Zola. Written over a period of thirty years, from the beginning of Rougon-Macquart to the Dreyfus affair, they are a rich source of information on a particularly fertile period in French literature. The letters are intimate, lacking all pretensions to elegance and stylistic constraints; taken together they describe vividly the private life and thoughts of this fervent...