<p>Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled "Natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire", it follows the life of one family during the Second French Empire (1852?1870). In this tremendous work Zola first and foremost examines the impact of social environment on men and women, by varying the social, economic, political and professional milieu in which e...