| 1840 | Émile Zola is born on April 2 in Paris, to Francesco Zola, an Italian civil engineer, and Émilie Zola, née Aubert. |
| 1843 | The Zolas move to Aix-en-Provence, where Francesco engineers and executes a plan to supply drinking water to the town. |
| 1844 | Le Comte de Monte Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo), by Alexandre Dumas (père), is published. |
| 1847 | Francesco dies of illness brought on by work-related exposure- to bad weather, leaving his wife and son in dire financial straits. |
| 1848 | The Revolution of February 24 leads to the fall of the July Monarchy and the establishment of the Second Republic . Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte is elected president. |
| 1852 | Émile enrolls at the College Bourbon in Aix, where he wins prizes in several subjects. He and fellow student and future painter Paul Cézanne form what will be a longstanding friendship. A love of the work of Alfred de Musset and Victor Hugo reflects Émile’s early affinity for Romanticism. Louis-Napoleon becomes emperor as Napoleon III. |
| 1853 | Baron Georges Haussmann begins his large-scale redesign of Paris. The Crimean War begins. |
| 1856 | Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary is published. |
| 1857 | Charles Baudelaire’s poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) is published. |
| 1858 | When they can no longer afford to live independently in Aix, Émilie and Émile move to Paris, hoping for assistance from friends. Émile receives a bursary (scholarship) that allows him to begin school at the prestigious Lycée Saint-Louis. |
| 1862 | Zola is hired as a clerk by the publisher Hachette and advances in the advertising department. In his free time, he reads contemporary fiction and writes journalistic pieces and fiction. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (The Miserable Ones) is published. |
| 1863 | Édouard Manet’s painting Déjeuner sur l‘herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), which depicts a nude woman and a partially nude woman picnicking with two dressed men, is exhibited in the Salon des Refusés and creates a scandal. |
| 1864 | A book of Zola’s short stories, Les Contes à Ninon (Tales for Ninon) , is published. The author corresponds with the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who publish the naturalistic novel Germinie Lacerteux (Germinie). The International Workingmen’s Association is founded. |
| 1865 | Zola meets and sets up a household with his future wife, Gabrielle Alexandrine Meley, a working-class seamstress . He publishes a sexually explicit fictional memoir, La Confession de Claude (Claude’s Confession), to considerable scandal and a great deal of publicity. A book that will substantially influence Zola’s thinking, Claude Bernard’s Introduction à l’étude de la médecine expérimentale (An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine) is published. Zola later argues that the novelist, like the scientist, can bring the scientific method to his work, and that the novelist can experiment with as well as observe his characters. |
| 1866 | Zola meets Édouard Manet, whose portrait of Zola will eventually hang in the Musée d‘Orsay in Paris. Zola resigns from Hachette and writes highly opinionated art and literary criticism for the newspaper L’Événement. Mes Haines (My Hates) and Mon Salon, two volumes of essays on art and literature, are published. |
| 1868 | Paris opens. In the novel Madeleine Férat, published this year, Zola explores the concept of heredity. |
| 1869 | Gustave Flaubert’s L‘Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education) is published. Zola writes a letter introducing himself to the author. Zola presents the master plan of Les Rougon-Macquart, his richly detailed twenty-novel portrait of a family, to his publisher. |
| 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. |
| 1894 | Lourdes, the first installment of Zola’s idealistic trilogy Les Trois Villes (The Three Cities), is published. Sadi Carnot, president of the French republic, is assassinated, and Jean Casimir-Périer becomes president. Spurred by virulent anti-Semitism in the military, the public, and the press, the French government without clear justification convicts Alfred Dreyfus, an officer in the French army, of giving secret information to a German military attaché. |
| 1896 | Rome, the next book in the Three Cities trilogy, is published. |
| 1897 | Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac debuts. |
| 1898 | Paris, the last book of the Three Cities trilogy, is published. New evidence leads to the reopening of the Dreyfus case, and Zola publishes his famous open letter in defense of Dreyfus, “J’Accuse,” in the newspaper L’Aurore. He accuses the army of deception and coverup; found guilty of libeling the army, he is fined 3,000 francs and sentenced to a year in prison. He flees to England. |
| 1899 | Zola returns to Paris. Dreyfus is reconvicted at a second court martial but is granted a presidential pardon. Zola publishes Fécondité (Fecundity), the first installment of a new series, Les Quatre Évangiles (The Four Gospels). |
| 1901 | Travail (Labor), the next in the Four Gospels series, is published. |
| 1902 | Zola dies, asphyxiated by carbon monoxide fumes resulting from a blocked chimney in his Paris apartment building. Many speculate that he was deliberately killed because of his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair. When he is buried at Montmartre Cemetery, his funeral is attended by 50,000 people. |
| 1903 | Vérité (Truth), the last of the Four Gospels novels that Zola completed, is published. The final volume, Justice, was not finished at the time of his death. |
| 1906 | Dreyfus is exonerated from any wrongdoing. |
| 1908 | In recognition of Zola’s achievements, his remains are transferred to the Panthéon in Paris. |
| 1937 | The Life of Émile Zola, a film directed by William Dieterle, wins three Academy Awards. |