Emile Zola - the Best - Rougon-Macquart
Explore the best of Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart series with a complete list of books. Dive into the epic saga of 19th-century France, family drama, and naturalist storytelling.
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Death
by Émile Zola
In the five stories in this volume, Zola describes the circumstances surrounding the deaths of five people from very different social contexts. The work is a literary study of the social differences and the value of life in France at the end of the 19th century.
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The Downfall (La Debacle. The Rougon-Macquart)
by Emile Zola
In "The Downfall" Zola tells the story of a terrific land-slide which overwhelmed the French Second Empire: It is a story of war, grim and terrible; of a struggle to the death between two great nations. In it the author has put much of his finest work, and the result is one of the masterpieces of literature. The hero is Jean Macquart, son of Antoine Macquart and brother of Gervaise. After the terrible death of his wife, as told in "La Terre" ("The Soil"), Jean enlisted for the second time in the army, and went through the campaign up to the battle of Sedan. After the capitulation he was made prisoner, and in escaping was wounded. When he returned to active service he took part in crushing the excesses of the Commune in Paris... The Downfall has been described as "a prose epic of modern war," and vast though the subject be, it is treated in a manner that is powerful, painful, and pathetic.
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The Soil
by Émile Zola
Two of Zola's best known works "The Soil," also known as "The Earth," and "The Rougon-Macquart" are packaged together in this volume. This English translation of "The Soil" in 1888 aroused such an outcry that a prosecution followed, and the translator and publisher, Henry Vizetelly, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment.
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The Mysteries of Marseille
by Émile Zola
Published in 1867, "The Mysteries of Marseille" recounts the love of Philippe Cayol, a poor, untitled republican, and of young Blanche de Cazalis, the niece of De Cazalis. Philippe's brother devotes himself to protecting the two lovers and the child Blanche gives birth to before entering a convent.
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The Joy of Life
by Émile Zola
Pauline Quenu, the daughter of shopkeepers in the Parisian business district Les Halles, is taken in by relatives on the coast of Normandy following the death of her parents. There, she is confronted with a gout-plagued host, his avaricious wife, and their lazy son, a morbid hypochondriac, whom she is expected to marry.
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His Excellency
by Émile Zola
His Excellency (French: Son Excellence Eugene Rougon) - From Zola's Rougon-Macquart Series. "Son Excellence Eugene Rougon is the one existing French novel which gives the reader a fair general idea of what occurred in political spheres at an important period of the Empire. It is a book for foreigners and particularly Englishmen to read with profit, for there are yet many among them who cherish the delusion that Napoléon III. was not only a good and true friend of England, but also a wise and beneficent ruler of France; and this, although his reign began with bloodshed and trickery, was prolonged by means of innume-rable subterfuges, and ended in woe, horror, and disgrace... There is, of course, some fiction in the book; but, again and again, page after page, I have found a simple record of fact, just deftly adapted to suit the requirements of the narrative. The history of the Second Empire is probably as familiar to me as it is to M. Zola himself-for, like him, I grew to manhood in its midst, with better opportunities, too, than he had of observing certain of its distinguishing features - and thus I have been able to identify innumerable incidents and allusions, and trace to their very source some of the most curious passages in the book. And it is for this reason, and by virtue of my own knowledge and experience, that I claim for His Excellency the merit of reflecting things as they really were in the earlier years of the Imperial régime." (Ernest Alfred Vizetelly)
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A Love Episode
by Émile Zola
Rougon-Macquart, volume 8: There can be no doubt in the mind of the judicial critic that in the pages of "A Love Episode" ("Une page d'amour") the reader finds more of the poetical, more of the delicately artistic, more of the subtle emanation of creative and analytical genius, than in any other of Zola's works... In all literature there is nothing like the portrayal of the punishment of Helene Grandjean. Helene and little Jeanne are reversions of type. The old "neurosis," seen in earlier bran-ches of the family, reappears in these characters. Readers of the series will know where it began. Poor little Jeanne, most pathetic of creations, is a study in abnormal jealousy, a jealousy which seems to be clairvoyant, full of supernatural intuitions, turning everything to suspicion, a jealousy which blights and kills. Could the memory of those weeks of anguish fade from Helene's soul? This dying of a broken heart is not merely the figment of a poet's fancy. It has happened in real life. The coming of death, save in the case of the very aged, seems, nearly always, brutally cruel, at least to those friends who survive. (C. C. Starkweather)
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The Fortune of the Rougons
by Emile Zola
This is the initial volume of the Rougon-Macquart series. Though it was by no means Zola's first essay in fiction, it was undoubtedly his first great bid for genuine literary fame, and the foundation of what must necessarily be regarded as his life-work.
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The Fete at Coqueville (The Coqueville Spree)
by Emile Zola
Zola has rarely displayed the quality of humour, but it is present in the story called "The Fete at Coqueville" ("La Fete a Coqueville"). Coqueville is the name given to a very remote Norman fishing-village, set in a gorge of rocks, and almost inaccessible except from the sea. Here a sturdy population of some hundred and eighty souls, all sprung from two rival families, live in the condition of a tiny Verona, torn between contending interests. A ship laden with liqueurs is wrecked on the rocks outside, and one precious cask after another comes riding into Coqueville over the breakers. The villagers spend a glorious week of perfumed inebriety... A very amusingly and very picturesquely told story. With an essay by Edmund Gosse about "The Short Stories of Zola."
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The Dream
by Émile Zola
Set against the background of a town in Northern France, this novel tells the story of a love idyll between a poor embroideress and the son of a wealthy aristocratic family.
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Abbé Mouret's Transgression
by Emile Zola
Serge Mouret, the younger son of Francois Mouret (see La Conquete de Plassans), was ordained to the priesthood and appointed Cure of Les Artaud, a squalid village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants he ministered with small encouragement. He had inherited the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him took the same form as in the case of his mother-a morbid religious enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. Brain fever followed, and bodily recovery left the priest without a mental past. Dr. Pascal Rougon, his uncle, hoping to save his reason, removed him from his accustomed surroundings and left him at the Paradou, the neglected demesne of a ruined mansion-house near Les Artaud, where he was nursed by Albine, niece of the caretaker. The Abb fell in love with Albine, and, oblivious of his vows, broke them... (J. G. Patterson)
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The Fat and the Thin
by Emile Zola
Zola presents a study of the teeming life which surrounds the great central markets of Paris. The heroine is Lisa Quenu, a daughter of Antoine Macquart, who has become prosperous and increasingly selfish. The book contains vivid pictures of the markets, bursting with the food of a great city, and of the vast population which lives by handling and distributing it.
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The Flood (French Classics)
by Émile Zola
From the perspective of the family's patriarch, 70-year-old Louis Roubien, Zola provides the reader with emotionally charged and detailed descriptions of a large family's desperate struggle against the rising flood waters and of the destruction of their farm.
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Fruitfulness
by Emile Zola
This volume is the first of a series of four works in which Emile Zola proposed to embody what he considered to be the four cardinal principles of human life. "Work, Truth," and "Justice" were to follow, but he died before completing the final title.(Classic Literature)
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Germinal
by Émile Zola
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
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