Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [3]
1870 eley and Zola marry. The Franco-Prussian War begins, which leads to the Siege of Paris and the fall of the Second Empire. During the 1870s, Zola will meet often with influential authors Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt, and Ivan Turgenev.
1871 Zola returns to Paris and publishes La Fortune des Rougon (The Fortune of the Rougons), the first of the Rougon- Macquart cycle; the novel enjoys only modest success. The Franco-Prussian War ends. Adolphe Thiers, president of France’s newly formed Third Republic, suppresses the Commune of Paris.
1872 Zola publishes La Curée (The Kill), a novel about real estate dealings during the years when Paris was being redesigned
1873 Zola publishes Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris), a novel that takes place in the central food markets of Paris. Arthur Rimbaud’s Une Saison en enfer (A Season in Hell) and Jules Verne’s Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days) are published. Napoleon III dies, and Patrice de MacMahon becomes president of the French republic, following the resignation of Thiers.
1874 La Conquete de Plassans (The Conquest of Plassans), the fourth novel of the Rougon-Macquart series, is published. The first Impressionist art exhibition is held.
1876 Another novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (His Excellency Eugène Rougon), is published.
1877 Zola’s L‘Assommoir (translated as The Drinking Den, The Dram Shop, and The Drunkard) , an authentic portrait of working-class life and the effects of alcoholism, is denounced by the left and the right but meets with great commercial success. Now financially well-off, the Zolas move to the rue de Boulogne.
1878 Une Page d Amour (A Love Affair), about the guilty passions of an adulterous couple, is published. The Zolas buy a cottage at Médan, near Paris.
1879 A theatrical production of LAssommoir is a huge success. Jules Grévy, a moderate, is elected president of the Third Republic. Jules Guesde founds the French Socialist Workers Party.
1880 Zola has his greatest commercial success with his ninth Rougon-Macquart novel, Nana. His influential treatise on naturalism, Le Roman Expérimental (The Experimental Novel), is published. Les Soirées de Médan (Evenings at Médan), a collection of stories by Zola and fellow authors, is published. Zola’s mother dies. Flaubert dies.
1882 Zola publishes the novel Pot-Bouille (Restless House) .
1883 Au Bonheur des dames (A Ladies’ Paradise) , about how a new enterprise, the department store, affects smaller merchants, is published. Guy de Maupassant’s Une Vie (A Life) is published.
1884 Zola’s novel La Joie de vivre (The Joy of Life) is published. The Waldeck-Rousseau law legalizes labor unions. J.-K. Huysmans publishes A rebours (Against the Grain), an attack on naturalism.
1885 Germinal, thought by many to be Zola’s greatest work, is published; it depicts the hard life of coal miners in northern France.
1886 L’Oeuvre (The Masterpiece) is published; the novel describes an Impressionist painter resembling Cézanne.
1887 The next Rougon-Macquart novel, La Terre (Earth or The Soil), is published.
1888 A “fairy tale” novel, La Rêve (The Dream), is published. While still married, Zola begins an affair with a young housekeeper, Jeanne Rozerot, that will continue until the end of his life.
1889 Rozerot gives birth to Zola’s first child, Denise. Construction of the Eiffel Tower, begun in 1887, is completed.
1890 La Bête Humaine (The Beast in Man) , considered by some to be Zola’s most pessimistic book, is published.
1891 Jacques, Rozerot and Zola’s second child, is born. Zola and his wife travel through the Pyrenees. L‘Argent (Money) is published.
1892 La Débâcle (The Debacle or The Collapse), a war novel that also traces the rise of the Paris Commune, is published.
1893 Zola publishes Le Docteur Pascal (Doctor Pascal), the final Rougon-Macquart work.