Although Emile Zola (1840-1902) is primarily remembered as a novelist, has had a wide range of talents as a playwright, librettist, journalist and crusader — he was unrelenting in his bitter attacks on politicians (including Napoleon III), the Church, the Army, social injustice and hypocrisy, and championed the cause of the working class. His cause célèbre was the Dreyfus Affair; after writing the article J’accuse, he was prosecuted and fled to Britain, the ensuing scandal finally bringing down more than one French government. From a youth of obscurity and often abject poverty, Zola became one of the most famous figures of France’s Third Republic. In this incisive biography, Alan Schom sheds new light on many of the artistic and literary figures among his friends, including Cézanne, Flaubert, Maupassant, Daudet, Turgenev, Goncourt and the ineffable Sarah Bernhardt. Zola suffered both publicly and privately: his writing was constantly misunderstood, and he was frequently vilified as a pornographer — even in British Parliament (his publisher in London was imprisoned!). The calm of Zola’s private world was shattered by the clash between the two women in his life: his domineering wife, and his young mistress by whom he fathered two children. The author has spent eleven years researching thousands of unpublished letters and other material, including information on the mysterious circumstances surrounding Zola’s death, for this rich and vibrant biography of Emile Zola — the man and the author. Dr Schom’s biography is a revealing new analysis of this towering figure of European literature and leading light of the Naturalist Movement, whose novels include Nana , Germinal and La Bête humaine . Alan Schom was Professor of French history at the University of California, Riverside, and later at Southern Connecticut State University. Having taken early retirement, he now writes full time at his home in Oxford. He gives occasional public lectures and travels frequently to France. Dr Schom has published a book on French colonial history, and several articles. He has two daughters.