Therese Raquin

Zola’s 20 Rougon-Macquart novels are a panoramic account of the Second French Empire. They are the story of a family principally between the years 1851 and 1871. These 20 novels contain over 300 major characters, who descend from the two family lines of the Rougons and Macquarts and who are related. In Zola’s words, which are the subtitle of the Rougon-Macquart series, they are "L’Histoire naturelle et sociale d’une famille sous le Second Empire"("The natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire").