Emile Zola has been attributed with starting the French realist movement. This biography spans his novels and is also a history of social and literary France in the late-19th century, and the political and intellectual world which Zola inhabited. The book analyzes Zola's relationships with Cezanne, Flaubert and Manet, placing his novels in their cultural context. It also considers his impact on the Dreyfus affair with the work, J'accuse.