Emile Zola

The Fortune of the Rougons (Les Rougon-Macquart #1) Annotated Emile Zola

The novel is partly an origin story, with a huge cast of characters swarming around - many of whom become the central figures of later novels in the series - and partly an account of the December 1851 coup d'état that created the French Second Empire under Napoleon III as experienced in a large provincial town in southern France. Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled Histoire Naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire (Natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire), it follows the lives of the members of the two titular branches of a fictional family living during the Second French Empire (1852-1870) and is one of the most prominent works of the French naturalism literary movement.