3 books to know: 63 3 Books To Know: French Literature (ePub)

Émile Zola was born April 2, 1840 in Paris, France. In 1865 he published his controversial first novel,  La Confession de Claude . In the following years he continued his journalism career in while publishing two novels. In 1868, he decided to write a large-scale series of novels, Les Rougon-Macquart. As the founder of the naturalist movement, Zola also published several treatises to explain his theories on art. He died on September 28, 1902.
 
Victor Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. Hugo is considered to be one of the greatest and best-known French writers. Hugo was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani. Many of his works have inspired music, both during his lifetime and after his death, including the musicals Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables. He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment.
 
Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary, his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert. Flaubert famously avoided the inexact, the abstract and the vaguely inapt expression, and scrupulously eschewed the cliché. In a letter to George Sand he said that he spends his time "trying to write harmonious sentences, avoiding assonances."