Zola And The Victorians: Censorship In The Age Of Hypocrisy

Description

London, 1888: Jack the Ripper stalks the streets of Whitechapel; national strikes and social unrest threaten the status quo; a grave economic crisis is spreading across the Atlantic ...Yet Her Majesty's government is preoccupied with "a mere book" - or rather, a series of books: new translations of the Rougon-Macquart saga by French literary giant Emile Zola. In his time, Zola made his British contemporaries look positively pastoral; much of his work is considered shocking and transgressive even now. But it was his English publisher who bore the brunt of the Victorians' moral outrage at Zola's "realistic" depictions of striking miners, society courtesans and priapic, feuding farmers. Seventy years before Lady Chatterley's Lover broke the back of British censorship, Henry Vizetelly's commitment to publishing Zola, and to the nascent principle of free speech, not only landed him in the dock and thereafter in prison, but brought to ruin to the publishing house he had founded. Meanwhile, Zola was going from strength to strength, establishing his reputation as a literary legend and falling in love with a girl half his age.
This lively, humorous and ultimately tragic tale is an exploration of the consequences of translation and censorship which remains relevant today for readers, publishers and authors everywhere.

Author description

Eileen Horne was born in California, relocating to Rome and then to London in the late Eighties. She has spent twenty years in the independent television sector, founding her own production company in 1997 and making over a hundred hours of primetime drama, among them two projects inspired by Zola's novels. She now combines her writing activities, including adaptations for radio and television, with work as a post-graduate tutor. Her first book, The Pitch (Faber 2006), was co-authored with Judy Counihan. She lives in London and Umbria with her husband and daughter.