"A novelist with a system, a passionate conviction, a great plan—incontestable attributes of M. Zola—is not now to be easily found in England or the United States, where the story-teller's art is almost exclusively feminine, is mainly in the hands of timid (even when very accomplished) women, whose acquaintance with life is severely restricted, and who are not conspicuous for general views. The novel, moreover, among ourselves, is almost always addressed to young unmarried ladies, or at least always assumes them to be a large part of the novelist's public.
"This fact, to a French story-teller, appears, of course, a damnable restriction, and M. Zola would probably decline to take au sérieux any work produced under such unnatural conditions. Half of life is a sealed book to young unmarried ladies, and how can a novel be worth anything that deals only with half of life? These objections are perfectly valid, and it may be said that our English system is a good thing for virgins and boys, and a bad thing for the novel itself, when the novel is regarded as something more than a simple jeu d'esprit, and considered as a composition that treats of life at large and helps us to know."
THE "ASSOMMOIR;"
(The Prelude to "Nana.")
TRANSLATED WITHOUT ABRIDGMENT FROM THE 97th FRENCH EDITION.
Illustrated with Sixteen Tinted Page Engravings, by French Artists.
"After reading Zola's novels it seems as if in all others, even in the truest, there were a veil between the reader and the things described, and there is present to our minds the same difference as exists between the representations of human faces on canvas and the reflection of the same faces in a mirror. It is like finding truth for the first time.
"Zola is one of the most moral novelists in France, and it is really astonishing how anyone can doubt this. He makes us note the smell of vice, not its perfume: his nude figures are those of the anatomical table, which do not inspire the slightest immoral thought; there is not one of his books, not even the crudest, that does not leave behind it pure, firm, and unmistakable aversion, or scorn, for the base passions of which he treats."—Signor de Amicis.
The above Works are published without the Illustrations, price 5s. each.
In Preparation. Uniform with the above Volumes.