The Beast Within - Emile Zola [0]
PENGUIN CLASSICS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Acknowledgements
THE BEAST WITHIN
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VII
VIII
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XII
Notes
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THE STORY OF PENGUIN CLASSICS
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THE BEAST WITHIN
ÉMILE ZOLA, born in Paris in 1840, was brought up in Aix-en-Provence in an atmosphere of struggling poverty after the death of his father in 1847. He was educated at the College Bourbon at Aix and then at the Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris. After failing the baccalauréat twice and then taking menial clerical employment, he joined the newly founded publishing house Hachette in 1862 and quickly rose to become head of publicity. Having published his first novel in 1865 he left Hachette the following year to become a full-time journalist and writer. Thérèse Raquin appeared in 1867 and caused a scandal, to which he responded with his famous Preface to the novel’s second edition in 1868 in which he laid claim to being a ‘Naturalist’. That same year he began to work on a series of novels intended to trace scientifically the effects of heredity and environment in one family: Les Rougon-Macquart. This great cycle eventually contained twenty novels, which appeared between 1870 and 1893. In 1877 the seventh of these, L’Assommoir (The Drinking Den), a study of alcoholism in working-class Paris, brought him abiding wealth and fame. On completion of the Rougon-Macquart series he began a new cycle of novels, LesTroisVilles: Lourdes,Rome, Paris (1894-8), a violent attack on the Church of Rome, which led to another cycle, Les Quatre Évangiles. While his later writing was less successful, he remained a celebrated figure on account of the Dreyfus case, in which his powerful interventions played an important part in redressing a heinous miscarriage of justice. His marriage in 1870 had remained childless, but his happy, public relationship in later life with Jeanne Rozerot, initially one of his domestic servants, brought him a son and a daughter. He died in mysterious circumstances in 1902, the victim of an accident or murder.
ROGER WHITEHOUSE was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Aston, in Birmingham. He studied French at the University of Oxford and later at the University of Warwick, where he specialized in Renaissance Studies. For several years he lived and worked in Paris, teaching at the École Normale Supérieure and at the Sorbonne. In 1970 he joined the staff at Bolton Institute as a lecturer in French and subsequently became Head of Literary Studies there. In 2000 he was appointed as a Research Fellow. He has previously translated Flaubert’s Three Tales (Penguin Classics, 2005) and is currently editing an anthology of the work of the Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren.
PENGUIN CLASSICS
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First published 1890 This translation first published 2007 1
Translation and editorial matter copyright © Roger Whitehouse, 2007
All rights reserved
The moral right of the translator and editor has been asserted
Set in 10.25/12.25 pt PostScript Adobe Sabon Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury