Editing Émile Zola (section)

==Early life==
Zola was born in Paris in 1840 to [[François Zola]] (originally Francesco Zolla) and Émilie Aubert. His father was an Italian engineer with some [[Greeks|Greek]] ancestry,<ref name="EB1911">{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Zola, Émile Édouard Charles Antoine|volume=28|page=1001|first=Frank Thomas|last=Marzials}}</ref> who was born in [[Venice]] in 1795, and engineered the [[Zola Dam]] in [[Aix-en-Provence]]; his mother was French.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sacquin |first1=Michèle |last2=Cabannes |first2=Viviane |title=Zola et autour d'une oeuvre : Au bonheur des dames |date=2002 |publisher=Bibliothèque nationale de France |isbn=9782717722161 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=avqRAAAAIAAJ}}</ref> The family moved to Aix-en-Provence in the [[Provence|southeast]] when Émile was three years old. In 1845, five-year-old Zola was sexually molested by an older boy.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Brown |first1=Frederick |title=Zola: A Life |year=1995 |publisher=Farrar Straus Giroux |isbn=0374297428 |page=23|quote=«It is described in a report filed by the Marseille police on April 3, 1845: "We conducted to the Palace of Justice a person named Mustapha, twelve years old, a native of Algiers and a domestic in the service of Monsieur Zola, civil engineer, number 4, rue de l'Arbre, who committed indecent assault [''attentat à la pudeur''] on the young Émile Zola, five years old."»}}</ref> Two years later, in 1847, his father died, leaving his mother on a meager pension. In 1852, Zola entered the Collège Bourbon as a boarding student. He would later complain about poor nutrition and [[bullying]] in school.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Brown |first1=Frederick |title=Zola: A Life |year=1995 |publisher=Farrar Straus Giroux |isbn=0374297428 |page=21 and 23|quote="During the six years I remained there, I was hungry." (page 21) and «"Let us remember how it was at secondary school. Vices had fertile ground, so that one lived in true Roman putrescence. Any cloistered association of people who belong to the same sex is morally reprehensible," he wrote in 1870, and the Goncourts report him lamenting on one occasion that "I had a perverted youth in wretched provincial school. Yes, a rotten childhood!"» (page 23)}}</ref>

In 1858, the Zolas moved to Paris, where Émile's childhood friend [[Paul Cézanne]] soon joined him. Zola started to write in the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] style. His widowed mother had planned a law career for Émile, but he failed his [[baccalauréat]] examination twice.<ref name="nom">[[Éditions Larousse|Larousse]], [http://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/personnage/Zola/150676 ''Émile Zola'']</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Berg |first=William J. |date=24 September 2020 |title=Émile Zola {{!}} French author|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emile-Zola|access-date=2020-11-09|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en}}</ref>

Before his breakthrough as a writer, Zola worked for minimal pay as a clerk in a shipping firm and then in the sales department for the publisher [[Hachette (publisher)|Hachette]].<ref name=":0" /> He also wrote literary and art reviews for newspapers. As a political journalist, Zola did not hide his dislike of [[Napoleon III]], who had successfully run for the office of president under the constitution of the [[French Second Republic]], only to use this position as a springboard for the [[French coup d'état of 1851|coup d'état that made him emperor]].