In the autumn of 1879 Paris was covered with yellow posters, bearing, in huge black letters, the word NANA. Everywhere Nana met one – on the walls, in the newspapers, on the boards which cover the backs and breasts of the unfortunate race of ‘sandwich men.’ Even in the shops of dealers in cigars the ends of the flexible pipes of india-rubber which supply smokers with the sacred gift of fire were covered with inscriptions to this effect – Lisez Nana! Nana!! Nana!!! M. Zola has said about the friends of M Victor Hugo, that they are well skilled in the art of the puff preliminary.3 It was evident that the publishers of M. Zola himself were not unlearned in this art. Stimulated by the orgies of advertisements which heralded Nana, I cherished the ambition to write a critical essay on the author of L'Assommoir and his works. No such study, I believe, existed then in English. Our country is left behind in what M. Zola calls the march of the great literary movement. The Russians have composed volumes on M. Zola. The Italians have produced, so M. Paul Alexis informs us in his recent biography of M. Zola, no less than fifteen works consecrated to his genius. He is relished in Denmark and Norway. M. de Sanctis has lectured on his novels at Naples. In Holland, Dutch professors have written volumes on M. Zola; and learned Germany has contributed freely to the new science of Zolaology. Spain is not altogether inert; America has purchased 100,000 volumes of a crude translation of Nana. England alone holds aloof from this vast movement. The cause of our isolation is only too obvious. Our unfortunate Puritanism, alas! prevents us from understanding M. Zola and the joys of naturalisme. I feared that it would be so as soon as I began the serious study of M. Zola's productions. One had not read many of M. Zola's novels before it became quite manifest that the English public would never take with pleasure to their author. ‘Moi, je suis malade! Ce Zola me rend positivement malade!’ – M. Sarcey is reported to have exclaimed at the first night of M. Zola's play, Thérèse Raquin.