184O-19O2
Novelist

Eaxly Years. Born in Paris, Emile Zola was the only child of Francesco and Emilie Aubert Zola. His twentyone- year-old mother was from a working-class family, while his father (twenty-three years his wife's senior) was a Venetian civil engineer who had immigrated to France. When Emile was not yet seven years old, his father died. For the next eleven years Emile lived with his mother in Aix-en-Provence, the town where his father had worked and died, and formed a lifelong friendship with the future Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne (1839-1906). Zola and his mother returned to Paris in 1858. The following year, after repeatedly failing the oral component of the baccalaureat examination, which students had to pass for admission to all university studies, Zola was forced to seek employment. In early 1860 a friend of the family found him employment as a copy clerk. This job...