Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Robert Lethbridge is a Life Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and Emeritus Professor of French Language and Literature at the University of London. He is currently Hon. Professor at the University of St Andrews. His books include Zola’s Painters (2022). He lives in Fife, Scotland.This study is the first in English to stand beside F W J Hemmings’s great 1953 critical biography, Lethbridge matching his sensitivity to the period, breadth of perspective and frank admiration of Zola’s ferocious energy and integrity. Like all the best books of this kind, it makes us want to start reading Zola again.
Literary Review
Lethbridge’s evocative, deeply felt biography is a <i>tour de force</i> of the biographical genre and a consummate study of the entanglements of Zola’s extraordinary life and his work. Through his nuanced plotting of the autobiographical, contextual, literary, and political determinants of his complex, often conflicted subject, Lethbridge illuminates the life trajectory of this iconic figure.
Professor Susan Harrow, Ashley Watkins Chair of French, University of Bristol
Weaving together private and public lives, the act of writing and the works themselves, generations of scholarship and a compelling narrative, Robert Lethbridge brings his own great erudition and storytelling to this account of the life (and death) of Émile Zola. This is an engaging and brilliant new biography.
Sonya Stephens, President, The American University of Paris
A compelling conclusion to a critical career which has unfolded over the last half century at the heart of Zola studies.
– Nicholas White, Professor of Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Culture, University of Cambridge
Reveal[s] him to have been a fundamentally dynamic novelist – evolving in step with the tempo of the times, continually thinking and rethinking the past, the present, even the future.
The Critic
Mr. Lethbridge plausibly connects the ambivalent treatment of sexuality in Zola’s fiction to his life.
Wall Street Journal
Lethbridge’s focus is on the roots of his subject’s creativity, those hidden drives at the heart of his writing.
TLS
Introduction
1 Origins
2 Apprenticeships
3 Writing the Rougon-Macquart I: From Planning to Realization
4 Writing the Rougon-Macquart II: Naturalism and Beyond
5 The Last Chapters of a Writing Life
6 Public and Private Lives
Epilogue
References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
Abbreviations
1 Origins
2 Apprenticeships
3 Writing the Rougon-Macquart I: From Planning to Realization
4 Writing the Rougon-Macquart II: Naturalism and Beyond
5 The Last Chapters of a Writing Life
6 Public and Private Lives
Epilogue
References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index