Early in his life, Zola discovered the work of Honoré de Balzac and his famous cycle La Comédie humaine.

I don't want to describe the contemporary society, but a single family, showing how the race is modified by the environment.

Physiologically the Rougon-Macquarts represent the slow succession of accidents pertaining to the nerves or the blood, which befall a race after the first organic lesion, and, according to environment, determine in each individual member of the race those feelings, desires and passions—briefly, all the natural and instinctive manifestations peculiar to humanity—whose outcome assumes the conventional name of virtue or vice.

[4]In a letter to his publisher, Zola stated his goals for the Rougon-Macquart: "1° To study in a family the questions of blood and environments.

Though it was to be modified many times over the years, with some members appearing or disappearing, the original tree shows how Zola planned the whole cycle before writing the first book.

The tree provides the name and date of birth of each member, along with certain properties of his heredity and his life: Note: the gallery does not include the tree made for La Bete Humaine[9] which included for the first time Jacques, the main protagonist of the book[10] For example, the entry for Jean Macquart on the 1878 tree read: Jean Macquart, né en 1831 - Election de la mère - Ressemblance physique du père.

The first three ideas led to Son Excellence Eugène Rougon, La Débâcle, and Le Docteur Pascal, respectively.

Although some of the novels in the cycle are direct sequels to one another, many of them follow on directly from the last chapters of La Fortune des Rougon, and there is a great deal of chronological overlap between the books; there are numerous recurring characters and several of them make "guest" appearances in novels centered on other members of the family.

Born in 1768 in the fictional Provençal town Plassans to middle-class parents (members of the French "bourgeoisie"), she has a slight intellectual disability.

This means that the family is split in three branches: Because Zola believed that everyone is driven by their heredity, Adelaide's children show signs of their mother's original deficiency.

For the Macquarts, who live in a difficult environment, it is manifested by alcoholism (L'Assommoir), prostitution (Nana), and homicide (La Bête humaine).

As a naturalist, Zola also gave detailed descriptions of urban and rural settings, and different types of businesses.

As a political reflection of life under Napoleon III, the novel La Conquête de Plassans looks at how an ambitious priest infiltrates a small Provence town one family at a time, starting with the Rougons.

La Débâcle takes place during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and depicts Napoleon III's downfall.

Between 1993 (The Masterpiece) and 2021 (The Assommoir), Oxford World's Classics published a complete run of all 20 novels in modern translation.

The BBC adapted the novels into a 27-episode (20 hour) radio drama series called Blood, Sex and Money by Emile Zola.