A writer’s training: The study of a feature of Zola’s correspondence Étude d’un enjeu de la correspondance zolienne

One of the interesting features of Zola’s correspondence is the understanding it provides of his conception of the training of writers: his own and that of others. Without a mentor at the beginning of his career, the early letters demonstrate that, under the guise of giving advice to his friends, Zola is in fact encouraging himself to work. Then, having become the master of Naturalism, we see him lavishing his recommendations on other authors, while also presenting himself as their equal, expressing both his satisfactions and his doubts, his ambition and his modesty.