J'Accuse

Émile Zola (1840-1902) is the author of the now-famous open letter J’Accuse…!, which appeared on the front page of the newspaper L’Aurore on January 13, 1898. Zola addressed the letter to Felix Faure, the President of France, in response to the Dreyfus Affair: a miscarriage of justice in which a Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was wrongfully accused and convicted of espionage and treason.

Zola was born in Paris to an Italian father and a French mother. Zola’s father was a respected civil engineer and the family was part of the professional middle class in society. Zola’s father died when Zola was seven, however, leaving them in financial difficulty. The family moved to Paris and Zola began to write in the Romantic style as a young man. He was part of a liberal and artistic set in Paris, many of whom would reach acclaim, including the artists Paul Cezanne and Paul Alexis. He attempted to pursue a law career but failed the exam necessary to progress from secondary school, instead taking work as a publishing house clerk to keep the family financially afloat. Zola kept writing in his free time, and eventually was able to find frequent work as a freelance journalist, often covering politics and reviews on various artistic and literary subjects. He was fired from his position as clerk after the publication of his 1865 semi-autobiographical novel La Confession de Claude, which was highly controversial in part for its frank depiction of the protagonist’s love affair with an impoverished sex worker.

Zola continued to write with increasing success and published numerous books, plays, short stories, and essays. His most lengthy collection of novels, the Les Rougon-Macquart cycle, focus on one family living during the reign of Napoleon III before the start of the Third Republic, and comprise 20 volumes. Zola eventually achieved financial success through the serialization and publication of his novels. Zola was also a leading figure in the Naturalist movement: This followed Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and believed that art should include a detailed degree of realism to reflect how genetics, social conditions, and the environment affect humans’ behaviors and characters.

Zola, as a famous author and literary figure in French society in 1898, had both the skill and the influence to write a letter as effective as J’Accuse…!. His position meant that he was able to publish on the front page of a major newspaper to raise awareness about the inherent injustice of the Dreyfus Affair.