The Drinking Den

1840

2 April Emile Zola born in Paris, the son of an Italian engineer, Francesco Zola, and of Françoise-Emilie Aubert.

1843

The family moves to Aix-en-Provence, which will become the town of ‘Plassans' in the Rougon-Macquart novels.

1847

Francesco Zola dies, leaving the family nearly destitute.

1848

The rule of King Louis-Philippe (the July Monarchy, which came to power in 1830) is overthrown and the Second Republic declared. Zola starts school. Karl Marx publishes
Manifesto of the Communist Party
.

1851

The Republic is dissolved after the
coup d'état
of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte who in the following year proclaims himself emperor as Napoleon III. Start of the Second Empire, the period that will provide the background for Zola's novels in the Rougon-Macquart cycle.

1852

Zola is enrolled at the Collège Bourbon, in Aix, where he starts a close friendship with the painter Paul Cézanne.

1858

The family moves back to Paris and Zola is sent to the Lycée Saint-Louis. His school career is undistinguished and he twice fails the
baccalauréat
.

1860

The start of a period of hardship as Zola tries to scrape a living together by various kinds of work, while engaging in his first serious literary endeavours, mainly as a poet. These years saw the height of the rebuilding programme undertaken by Baron Haussmann, Prefect of Paris from 1853 to 1869, which is reflected in several of Zola's novels, including
The Drinking Den
.

1862

Zola joins the publisher Hachette, and in a few months becomes the firm's head of publicity.

1863

Makes his début as a journalist.

1864

Zola's first literary work, the collection of short stories,
Contes à Ninon
, appears.

1865

Publishes his first novel,
La Confession de Claude
. Meets his future wife, Gabrielle-Alexandrine Meley; they marry in 1870.

1866

Leaves Hachette. From now on, he lives by his writing.

1867

Publication of
Thérèse Raquin
, the story of how a working-class woman and her lover kill her husband, but are afterwards consumed by guilt. In the Preface to the second edition (1868), Zola declares that he belongs to the literary school of ‘Naturalism'.

1868-9

Zola develops the outline of his great novel-cycle,
Les Rougon-Macquart
, which he subtitles ‘The Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire'. It is founded on the latest theories of heredity. He signs a contract for the work with the publisher Lacroix.

1870

The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War leads in September to the fall of the Second Empire. Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie go into exile in England and the Third Republic is declared. Paris is besieged by Prussian forces.
La Fortune des Rougon
starts to appear in serial form.

1871

Publication in book form of
La Fortune des Rougon
, the first novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle. After the armistice with Prussia, a popular uprising in March threatens the overthrow of the government of Adolphe Thiers, which flees to Versailles. The radical Paris Commune takes power until its bloody repression by Thiers in May; the events would have great importance for the Socialist Left. Zola was shocked both by the anarchy of the Commune and by the savagery with which it was repressed.

1872

Publication of
La Curée
, the second of the Rougon-Macquart novels. Part of it had appeared in serialized form (September–November 1871), but publication had been suspended by the censorship authorites.

1873

Publication of
Le Ventre de Paris
, the third of the cycle set in and around the market of Les Halles.

1874

Publication of
La Conquête de Plassans
.

1875

Publication of
La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret
.

1876

Son Excellence Eugène Rougon
follows the career of a minister under the Second Empire. Later in the same year, the seventh of the Rougon-Macquart novels,
The Drinking Den (L'Assommoir)
, begins to appear in serial form and immediately causes a sensation with its grim depiction of the ravages of alcoholism and life in the Parisian slums.

1877

The Drinking Den
is published in book form and becomes a bestseller. Zola's fortune is made and he is recognized as a leading figure in the Naturalist movement.

1878

Zola follows the harsh realism of
The Drinking Den
with a gentler tale of domestic life,
Une page d'amour
. Buys a house at Médan.

1879

Nana
appears in serial form, before publication in book form in the following year. The central character, whose childhood and adolescence were described in
The Drinking Den
, grows up to become a high-class prostitute; the novel was to attract further scandal to Zola's name.

1880

Publication of
Les Soirées de Médan
, an anthology of short stories by Zola and some of his Naturalist ‘disciples', including Maupassant. Zola expounds the theory of Naturalism in
Le Roman expérimental
. In May, Zola's literary mentor, the writer Gustave Flaubert, dies; in October, Zola loses his much-loved mother. A period of depression follows and he suspends writing the Rougon-Macquart for a year.

1882

Zola's next book,
Pot-Bouille
, centres on an apartment house and the character of the bourgeois seducer, Octave Mouret. The novel analyses the hypocrisy of the respectable middle class.

1883

Mouret reappears in
Au Bonheur des Dames
which studies the phenomenon of the department store.

1884

La Joie de vivre
. Towards the end of the year,
Germinal
starts to appear in serial form and is published in book form the next year. Set in a northern French mining community, this powerful novel is Zola's most politically committed fictional work.

1886

L'Œuvre
provides a revealing insight into Parisian artistic and literary life, as well as a reflection of contemporary aesthetic
debates, drawing on Zola's friendship with many leading painters and writers. However, Cézanne reacts badly to Zola's portrait of him in the novel, and ends their friendship.

1887

La Terre
, a brutally frank portrayal of peasant life, causes a fresh uproar and leads to a crisis in the Naturalist movement when five ‘disciples' of Zola sign a manifesto against the novel.

1888

Publication of
Le Rêve
. Zola begins his liaison with Jeanne Rozerot, the mistress with whom he will have two children.

1890

La Bête humaine
, the story of a pathological killer, is set against the background of the railways. Though not the best novel in the cycle, it is to be one of the most popular.

1891

L'Argent
examines the world of the Stock Exchange.

1892

La Débâcle
analyses the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the end of the Second Empire.

1893

The final novel in the cycle,
Le Docteur Pascal
, develops the theories of heredity which have guided
Les Rougon-Macquart
.

1894

With
Lourdes
, Zola starts a trilogy of novels, to be completed by
Rome
(1896) and
Paris
(1898), about a priest who turns away from Catholicism towards a more humanitarian creed. In December, a Jewish officer in the French army, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, is found guilty of spying for Germany and sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony on Devil's Island, off the coast of French Guiana.

1897

New evidence in the case suggests that Dreyfus's conviction was a gross miscarriage of justice, inspired by anti-Semitism. Zola publishes three articles in
Le Figaro
demanding a retrial.

1898

Zola's open letter,
J'Accuse
, in support of Dreyfus, addressed to Félix Faure, President of the Republic, is published in
L'Aurore
(13 January). It proves a turning-point, making the case a litmus test in French politics: for years to come, being pro- or anti - Dreyfusard will be a major component of a French person's ideological profile (with the nationalist Right leading the campaign against Dreyfus). Zola is tried for libel and sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 francs. In July, waiting for a retrial (granted on a technicality), he leaves for London, where he spends a year in exile.

1899

Zola begins a series of four novels,
Les Quatre Évangiles
, which would remain uncompleted at his death. They mark his transition from Naturalism to a more idealistic and Utopian view of the world.

1902

29 September Zola is asphyxiated by the fumes from the blocked chimney of his bedroom stove, perhaps by accident, perhaps (as is still widely believed) assassinated by anti-Dreyfusards. On 5 October his funeral in Paris is witnessed by a crowd of 50,000. His remains were transferred to the Pantheon in 1908.