This volume, “Thérèse Raquin,” was Zola’s third book, but itwas the one that first gave him notoriety, and made him somebody, as the sayinggoes.
While still a clerk at Hachette’s at eight pounds a month, engaged inchecking and perusing advertisements and press notices, he had already in 1864published the first series of “Les Contes a Ninon”—a reprintof short stories contributed to various publications; and, in the followingyear, had brought out “La Confession de Claude.” Both these bookswere issued by Lacroix, a famous go-ahead publisher and bookseller in thosedays, whose place of business stood at one of the corners of the Rue Vivienneand the Boulevard Montmartre, and who, as Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie., endedin bankruptcy in the early seventies.
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