Bad Books May Destroy States

By Author: katherine
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Zola's reported dissatisfaction with Vizetelly had little to do with the quality of the publisher's translations; what the author had objected to was his release to an 'uneducated' mass audience. As such, his apparent contentment with the Lutetian Society edition owed more likely to its rationale, which, instead of contesting Vizetelly's convictions, actually endorsed them. In addition to promising unexpurgated texts, the Society vowed that its translations 'would not be offered to the ordinary English public'. Subscription-only, they were solely 'for private distribution among its members', and there were only 310 copies of each novel 300 on 'hand-made paper', the remainder on 'Japanese vellum' with the added assurance that 'no further copies of this book will ever be printed' The Lutetian Society thus put fewer than 2000 editions into circulation, whereas Vizetelly had claimed before his Replica Cartier prosecution to have been selling 1000 copies of Zola's novels weekly. So there was little chance of the Society's unexpurgated translations falling into ...
... the hands of unwitting readers, the necessary legal condition for obscenity. Indeed, the most formidable obstacle to acquiring the Lutetian Society edition was its price: guineas for the set of six novels.

As a 'protest', then, the Lutetian Society's enterprise was hollow. Observing the letter of the recently demonstrated law, it obtained freedom of expression by turning away from 'the common market'. While the Society promised the mono-glot English reader full access to 'the master-pieces of Continental fiction' it was at some price. Predictably, the volumes were not prosecuted: legally, there was 'no question of literature' with regard to Zola unless, it seemed, he was published in French, or in editions sold for over twenty times the average price of fiction. Of course, the substitution of wealth for linguistic competence as the decisive factor in Cartier Replica Watches the construction of literary value changed little: spending power was simply used as another index of class; and class, in turn, signified taste. It is hasty, therefore, to adduce the Lutetian Society edition as evidence that Zola's 'banning ... did not... have a long-lasting effect'. The highly regulated nature of the Society's texts testifies rather to the enduring impact of the Vizetelly rulings, which fostered further division between what the NVA called 'the select literary class' and 'the common market'. Novelists were put in the position of having either to compromise the content of their fiction, or address a minority audience. Ironically, Vizetelly's bid to devolve power from the circulating libraries, by issuing affordable single-volume fiction for open sale, only affirmed the predicament of which many writers with Mudie's in mind had traditionally complained.

In view of the controversy outlined here, it may come as a surprise to learn that Zola was warmly welcomed when he visited London in September 1893. The Lord Mayor received him at the Guildhall; an elaborate firework display illuminated his portrait in the sky above the Crystal Palace; and editors and writers hosted soirees in his honour. Even if the Star did ask why 'the author of GerminaF visited the Alhambra music hall but not 'our English coal-pits in the Midlands' with a miners' strike on, the half-penny daily played to its working-class readership the press generally reported on Zola's tour of London with reverence. The vituperation that had been expressed during the Vizetelly affair subsided, as the English attitude to Zola turned sanguine. For example, when a murder epidemic struck London immediately after his visit, the Pall Mall Gazette wondered, tongue-in-cheek, if 'the populace has taken to contemplating the histories of "Les Rougon-Macquart", or if M. Zola's influence has in some subtle way been filtering through the masses'. Five years earlier, when Zola's influence on the masses had been no joking matter, the newspaper warned with utmost seriousness that 'Bad Books May Destroy States', citing La Terre as its prime example.