The Earth
Emile Zola
1887
A vivid portrait of French peasant life, with coarse language and explicit sex scenes, Emile Zola’s novel La Terre (The Earth), the 15th novel in his Rougon-Macquart series, alienated many readers when it was published in 1887. In a “manifesto” printed in Le Figaro newspaper, five former supporters of Zola’s work deplored his descent into the “depths of filth.”
It was the author’s English publisher, Henry Vizetelly, however, who faced legal action. When he issued a translation of La Terre, as The Soil, in 1888, the National Vigilance Association, affronted by the novel’s sex scenes-and one in which a woman gives birth next to a cow delivering a calf, blurring the difference between human and animal-took Vizetelly to court for obscenity. Advised to plead guilty, the publisher was fined £100 and agreed to withdraw the translation.
Vizetelly had an obstinate streak, however, and reissued the book the following year, albeit without the offending sections. Back in court, he was fined £200 and given a three-month prison sentence. It was an experience from which the 69-year-old publisher never fully recovered, and he died in 1894. Zola outlived him by eight years, during which he completed two more series of novels.
