Émile Zola

Zola spent twenty years on twenty novels following one family through the Second Empire, working from notebooks filled on mine floors and market halls. Then, in January 1898, he published an open letter to the president accusing the army of framing Alfred Dreyfus.

He was convicted of libel and fled to England. Dreyfus was eventually cleared. Zola died four years later of carbon monoxide from a blocked chimney; a roofer confessed decades afterwards to having blocked it. He was moved to the Panthéon in 1908.