Émile Zola - by Robert Lethbridge (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Nuanced and insightful, a comprehensive exploration of the life, work, and times of the celebrated French literary polymath.

Émile Zola is widely regarded as one of the world's greatest writers, whose reputation was reinforced by his historic intervention in the Dreyfus Affair. This book explores Zola's life and work and how these were determined by the traumatic history of his times. From humble beginnings, Zola's life was marked by the determination to succeed. Robert Lethbridge traces his development as a writer, including Zola's earliest texts and his novel cycles, and further shows how Zola's extraordinary creativity extended from his journalism to experiments in the theater and even to his own operatic adaptations of his novels. Lethbridge offers the reader new perspectives, informed by the most recent research, which bring together Zola's writing and its historical context.

Review Quotes

"This is an enlightening, carefully argued, richly documented, and timely biography by a lifelong Zola specialist. Essential."

-- "Choice"

"Lethbridge sheds light on the writer who was to become the conscience of a nation in the midst of tumult. He skillfully and adeptly shows that Zola lived a full, determined life that encompassed so much in nineteenth-century France. The biography paints a portrait of one of the most active and creative lives to ever be lived. . . . The ultimate conclusion is that Zola lived a determined life--not in the sense of fatalism, but rather as a man truly determined to do something great for his beloved country. The portrait that Lethbridge so skillfully paints is one of a writer, determined to portray reality in his fiction at all costs and to call France to something higher in his political journalism and criticism. Lethbridge shows Zola at his best, criticizing the corruption of the Second French Empire with his fiction. The reader is left with a sense of awe at the determination of Zola to create a beautiful legacy with his words, and the reader will ultimately have a desire to go read those words after reading Lethbridge's work."-- "Law and Liberty"

"This biography by British academic Lethbridge makes for enjoyable reading as it underlines the relevance of the life of a writer whose books explored, in massive imaginative detail, war and peace, wealth and poverty, truth and delusion. . . . Zola's reputation has never seriously diminished--he remains a cornerstone of French literature. Lethbridge has written an engrossing narrative."-- "The Arts Fuse"

"Lethbridge's focus is on the roots of his subject's creativity, those hidden drives at the heart of his writing."-- "Times Literary Supplement"

"The prolific novelist wanted to portray the workings of everyday life in France in an increasingly mechanized age. His mission was to expose the origins of social unease. . . . Lethbridge . . . breaks up his closely argued literary analysis with casual asides. . . . 'One is almost tempted to say that his novels are engineered, ' Lethbridge writes. Zola plotted carefully and gave thought to alternating subjects, themes and moods within his series. More obviously, his works evince a queasy fascination with the social and technological upheaval of the era: machinery, railroads, glass-and-iron buildings, department stores, even true-crime content and disaster tourism. These innovations, in Zola's depiction, exacerbate humans' bestial instincts. People are anonymized by mass politics and industrialization. It is a world in which humans swarm and machines breathe."--Timothy Farrington "The Wall Street Journal"

"Reveal[s] him to have been a fundamentally dynamic novelist--evolving in step with the tempo of the times, continually thinking and rethinking the past, the present, even the future."-- "The Critic"

"This study is the first in English to stand beside F W J Hemmings's great 1953 critical biography, Lethbridge matching his sensitivity to the period, breadth of perspective and frank admiration of Zola's ferocious energy and integrity. Like all the best books of this kind, it makes us want to start reading Zola again."-- "Literary Review"

"Weaving together private and public lives, the act of writing and the works themselves, generations of scholarship, and a compelling narrative, Lethbridge brings his own great erudition and storytelling to this account of the life (and death) of Émile Zola. This is an engaging and brilliant new biography."--Sonya Stephens, president, American University of Paris

"A compelling conclusion to a critical career which has unfolded over the last half century at the heart of Zola studies."--Nicholas White, professor of nineteenth-century French literature and culture, University of Cambridge

"Lethbridge's evocative, deeply felt biography is a tour de force of the biographical genre and a consummate study of the entanglements of Zola's extraordinary life and his work. Through his nuanced plotting of the autobiographical, contextual, literary, and political determinants of his complex, often conflicted subject, Lethbridge illuminates the life trajectory of this iconic figure."--Susan Harrow, Ashley Watkins Chair of French, University of Bristol

About the Author

Robert Lethbridge is a life fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and emeritus professor of French language and literature at the University of London. He is currently honorary professor at the University of St Andrews. His books include Zola's Painters. He lives in Fife, Scotland.