Zola , Émile , 1840-1902 , novelist and journalist

Émile Zola was born in Paris and brought up in the south of France. He returned to Paris aged 18 as a student and subsequently worked in clerical jobs before becoming a journalist and author. His best known writings are novel Germinal (1885), which was part of the 'Les Rougon-Macquart' cycle of 20 novels, and the newspaper article 'J'accuse' (13 January 1898), which accused the French government of anti-Semitism over the Dreyfuss affair. Zola died in 1902 and his body was reburied in the Panthéon in 1908.