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Emile Zola

Emile Zola, the famous French writer, was born in 1840. His father was an Italian engineer and his mother was French. The family lived in the south of France for a few years, but moved to Paris after Emile's father's death, when he was only three. Zola did not pass his high school exams, so he could not study at university. Instead, he worked in several different jobs, before he decided to become a journalist and writer.

At the age of 28, he knew what he wanted to write: a set of twenty books to tell the story of two parts of the same family living in France at that time. In this way, he showed people both the good and the bad sides of change – the change which the Industrial Revolution was bringing to the country. In that way, many people compare him to Charles Dickens, the English writer, who wrote about very similar ideas.

Zola wanted to describe life as truly as possible, and did a lot of research to prepare his books. So, for example, he visited coal mines before writing a story of the miners' labour problems; or the theatres in Paris, before writing about the life of an actress.

Zola was not just a writer, but also a political journalist. He asked a lot of difficult questions about the activities of the government and the army. For that reason, the government was not very happy with him and made his life very difficult.