ZOLA, Émile. Germinal. Paris: G. Charpentier. 1885.
8vo. Contemporary maroon hard-grain half morocco over cloth by Birdsall and Son of Northampton, title in gilt to spine, top edge gilt; pp. [4], 591, [1]; hinges cracked but holding firm, boards slightly soiled, extremities and spine a little rubbed; light spotting and damp staining throughout, a good copy overall; contemporary ownership signature to title dated “92”; bookplate of James Stevenson, dated 1965, to front pastedown.
First edition of Émile Zola’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels in the French language.
Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Zola’s monumental twenty-volume cycle Les Rougon-Macquart, his naturalist chronicle of “the natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire”. Inspired by Balzac’s La Comédie humaine, Zola sought not only to depict the full spectrum of contemporary society but to explore the workings of heredity and environment within a family line.
Set in a mining community in the far north of France, the novel offers a vivid portrayal of class struggle and industrial exploitation, capturing both the brutal realities of working-class life and the ideological ferment of the age – Marxism, anarchism and trade unionism. “Zola’s comparison of the coal mine to a devouring monster and his use of animal and botanical imagery to characterize the workers create a novel of epic scope that replicates, in modern terms, ancient myths of damnation and resurrection” (Britannica).
First serialised in Gil Blas between November 1884 and February 1885, Germinal was published in book form in March 1885 (the present edition). The novel had a profound impact on contemporary readers, notably Vincent van Gogh.
#2122304