Editing Émile Zola (section)

===Literary output===
[[Image:Paul Cézanne - Paul Alexis Lê um Manuscrito a Zola.jpg|thumb|left|[[Paul Cézanne]], ''[[Paul Alexis]] Reading to Émile Zola'', 1869–1870, [[São Paulo Museum of Art]]]]
More than half of Zola's novels were part of the twenty-volume {{lang|fr|Les Rougon-Macquart}} cycle, which details the history of a single family under the reign of Napoléon III. Unlike [[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]], who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into ''[[La Comédie Humaine]]'', Zola from the start, at the age of 28, had thought of the complete layout of the series.{{Citation needed|date=October 2016}} Set in France's [[Second Empire (France)|Second Empire]], in the context of [[Haussmann's renovation of Paris|Baron Haussmann's changing Paris]], the series traces the environmental and hereditary influences of violence, alcohol, and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the [[Industrial Revolution]]. The series examines two branches of the family—the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts—over five generations.

In the preface to the first novel of the series, Zola states, "I want to explain how a family, a small group of regular people, behaves in society, while expanding through the birth of ten, twenty individuals, who seem at first glance profoundly dissimilar, but who are shown through analysis to be intimately linked to one another. Heredity has its own laws, just like gravity. I will attempt to find and to follow, by resolving the double question of temperaments and environments, the thread that leads mathematically from one man to another."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Zola |first=Émile |title=La Fortune des Rougon |publisher=Gallimard |year=1981 |isbn= |location=Paris, France |pages=27}}</ref>

Although Zola and Cézanne were friends from childhood, they experienced a falling out later in life over Zola's fictionalised depiction of Cézanne and the [[Bohemianism|Bohemian]] life of painters in Zola's novel {{Lang|fr|[[L'Œuvre]]}} (''The Masterpiece'', 1886).

[[File:Émile François Zola, Vanity Fair, 1880-01-24.jpg|thumb|160px|Captioned "French Realism", caricature of Zola in the London magazine ''[[Vanity Fair (British magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'', 1880]]
From 1877, with the publication of ''[[L'Assommoir]]'', Émile Zola became wealthy; he was better paid than [[Victor Hugo]], for example.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Zola |first=Émile |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4FDCvwEACAAJ |title=The Three Cities Trilogy Complete: Lourdes, Rome and Paris |year=2005 |publisher=Library of Alexandria |isbn=978-1-4655-2672-4 |language=en}}</ref> Because ''L'Assommoir'' was such a success, Zola was able to renegotiate his contract with his publisher Georges Charpentier to receive more than 14% royalties and the exclusive rights to serial publication in the press.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Books : a living history |last=Martyn |first=Lyons |year=2011 |publisher=J. Paul Getty Museum |isbn=9781606060834 |location=Los Angeles |pages=143 |oclc=707023033}}</ref> Subsequently, sales of ''L'Assommoir'' were even exceeded by those of ''[[Nana (novel)|Nana]]'' (1880) and ''La Débâcle'' (1892).<ref name="EB1911"/> He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organised cultural dinners with [[Guy de Maupassant]], [[Joris-Karl Huysmans]], and other writers at his luxurious villa (worth 300,000 francs)<ref>{{cite journal |title=Literary gossip |journal=The Week: A Canadian Journal of Politics, Literature, Science and Arts |date=27 December 1883 |volume=1 |issue=4 |page=61 |url=https://archive.org/stream/weekcanadianjour01toro#page/n30/mode/1up|access-date=23 April 2013}}</ref> in Médan, near Paris, after 1880. Despite being nominated several times, Zola was never elected to the {{lang|fr|[[Académie française]]}}.<ref name="EB1911"/>

Zola's output also included novels on population (''Fécondité'') and work (''Travail''), a number of plays, and several volumes of criticism. He wrote every day for around 30 years, and took as his motto {{lang|la|[[Nulla dies sine linea]]}} ("not a day without a line").

The self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola's works inspired operas such as those of [[Gustave Charpentier]], notably ''[[Louise (opera)|Louise]]'' in the 1890s. His works were inspired by the concept of [[heredity]] and milieu ([[Claude Bernard]] and [[Hippolyte Taine]])<ref>{{Citation |last=Zola |first=Émile |title=Le Roman expérimental |date=1902 |url=https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Roman_exp%C3%A9rimental |pages=1–53 |publisher=Paris : Charpentier|access-date=2021-01-07}}</ref> and by the realism of Balzac and Flaubert.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mitterand |first=Henri |title=Zola et le naturalisme |publisher=Presses universitaires de France |year=1986 |isbn= |location= |pages=}}</ref> He also provided the libretto for several operas by [[Alfred Bruneau]], including ''[[Messidor (opera)|Messidor]]'' (1897) and ''[[L'Ouragan (opera)|L'Ouragan]]'' (1901); several of Bruneau's other operas are adapted from Zola's writing. These provided a French alternative to Italian [[verismo]].<ref>{{Cite Grove |title=Zola, Emile |author=Richard Langham Smith |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O004671}}</ref>

He is considered to be a significant influence on those writers that are credited with the creation of the so-called [[new journalism]]: [[Tom Wolfe|Wolfe]], [[Truman Capote|Capote]], [[Hunter S. Thompson|Thompson]], [[Norman Mailer|Mailer]], [[Joan Didion|Didion]], [[Gay Talese|Talese]] and others.
[[Tom Wolfe]] wrote that his goal in writing fiction was to document contemporary society in the tradition of [[John Steinbeck]], Charles Dickens, and Émile Zola.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}