As a study of the ever-lasting struggle between capital and labour the work has no rival in fiction; the miseries and degradation of the mining class, their tardy revolt against their employers, and their sufferings from hunger during its futile course, these are the theme, and the result is a picture of gloom, horrible and without relief.

Nana.

A novel dealing largely with theatrical life in Paris.  Nana, the daughter of Coupeau and Gervaise Macquart his wife (L’Assommoir), has been given a part in a play produced at the Theatre des Varietes, and though she can neither sing nor act, achieves by the sheer force of her beauty an overwhelming success.  All Paris is at her feet, and she selects her lovers from among the wealthiest and best born.  But her extravagance knows no bounds, and ruin invariably overtakes those who yield to her fascination.  After squandering vast sums she goes to the East, and stories spread that she had captivated a viceroy and gained a great fortune in Russia.  Her return to Paris is speedily followed by her death from small-pox.  In this novel the life of the courtesan class is dealt with by Zola with unhesitating frankness; there are many vivid studies of theatrical manners; and the racecourse also comes within its scope.  The work was intended to lay bare the canker which was eating into the social life of the Second Empire and ultimately led to the debacle of 1870.

La Terre.

This is a novel which treats of the conditions of agricultural life in France before the war with Prussia, and the subsequent downfall of the Second Empire.  It is, in some respects, the most powerful of all Zola’s novels, but in dealing with the subject he unfortunately thought it necessary to introduce incidents and expressions which, from their nature, must always render it impossible to submit the book in its entirety to the general English reader.

Its connection with the Rougon-Macquart series is somewhat slight.  Jean Macquart, son of Antoine Macquart and brother of Gervaise (La Fortune des Rougon), having served his time in the Army, came to the plain of La Beauce, and became an agricultural labourer on the farm of La Borderie, which belonged to Alexandre Hourdequin.  He fell in love with Lise Mouche, who, however, married Buteau, and Macquart subsequently married her sister Francoise.  Constant quarrels now arose between the two sisters as to the division of their father’s property, and in the end Francoise was murdered by her sister.  Macquart, tired of the struggle, decided to rejoin the army, which he did immediately after the outbreak of war.

The interest of the book is, however, largely connected with the history of the Fouans, a family of peasants, the senior member of which, having grown old, divided his land among his three children.  The intense and brutish rapacity of these peasants, their utter lack of any feeling of morality or duty, their perfect selfishness, not stopping short of parricide, form a picture of horror unequalled in fiction.  It is only to be regretted that the author, in leaving nothing to the imagination, has produced a work suitable only for the serious student of sociology.