ZOLA ÉMILE Autograph Letter Signed to an unnamed recipient (

Sale 2619 - Lot 121

Price Realized: $ 500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

ZOLA, ÉMILE. Autograph Letter Signed, to an unnamed recipient ("dear sir"), in French, granting permission for him to use his name, but declining to enter into a collaboration, noting that any such effort requires the approval of the Society of People of Letters of France, and adding that he had left journalism to concentrate upon his novel writing. 1 page, 8vo, with integral blank; faint scattered foxing, folds. Paris, 5 February 1897

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"Alas! dear sir, I gladly give you the support of my name, but my effective collaboration is impossible. I'm way too busy. Draw whatever you please from my published works, and even then you must first make a treaty with the Société des Gens de Lettres. I left the press, I locked myself in my novels, and in the evening I'm too tired to get back to other work."
Despite his claim about leaving journalism, Zola could not keep away from the newspapers since, less than a year later, he expressed his outrage at the Dreyfuss affair in an open letter to France's president--"J'Accuse...!"--published in the Paris daily L'Aurore to sensational effect.