DREYFUS AFFAIR Émile ZOLA / Signed Autograph Letter / The Truth in Progress

  

Autographed letter signed "Émile Zola" [to his publisher Eugène Fasquelle] Paris, February 5, 1901, 1 p. Small stain on the left margin.

Zola sends the final proofs of La Vérité en marche to his publisher and urges him to publish as soon as possible. "My dear friend, I am sending you the entire La Vérité en marche, definitively corrected, and it is unnecessary for new proofs to be returned to me.

However, before giving the go-ahead for printing, I ask you to carefully review my final corrections. You will please me by expediting the printing as much as possible because, for all the reasons you know, it is desirable that we appear immediately.

" Desired by Émile Zola, La Vérité en marche brings together the main texts of the writer's engagement in the Dreyfus affair, including the famous "J'accuse.!", published on the front page of the January 13, 1898 issue of the newspaper L'Aurore. While Zola implores his publisher to publish the work as soon as possible, it is worth noting that the Senate had voted five weeks earlier on an amnesty law protecting the military and civilian conspirators responsible for the plot against Dreyfus from any legal action. The writer thus wishes, in opposition to the law passed by the Senate, to influence public opinion as much as possible. Fasquelle respected Zola's wishes, as the work was published on February 16, the last published during the writer's lifetime.