- Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was a French novelist, playwright, journalist, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. In literature, he is best known for Les Rougon-Macquart, a cycle of twenty novels that follows the lives of the members of the two titular branches of a fictional family living during the Second French Empire (1852–1870).
