Brian Nelson is a professor of French Studies at Monash University

Monash University

Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....

, Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

 and editor of the Australian Journal of French Studies. Nelson graduated with an undergraduate degree from Cambridge University and did postgraduate work at Oxford University. Before going to Monash he taught at the University of Wales Aberystwyth, and one year in Paris. Nelson teaches modern French literature and cultural studies on topics such as Paris and "The Female Body", as well as translation studies.

In addition to a number of monographs including Zola and the Bourgeoisie and Émile Zola: A Selective and Analytical Bibliography, he has made a number of modern translations of Emile Zola

Émile Zola

Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...

 for the Oxford World's Classics

Oxford World's Classics

Oxford World's Classics is an imprint of Oxford University Press. First established in 1901 by Grant Richards and purchased by the Oxford University Press in 1906, this imprint publishes primarily dramatic and classic literature for students and the general public...

 series. About these translations, Nelson said:

My aim as a translator is to transform Zola's prose into a work of art that approaches the original, that is, is faithful to the spirit of the original. This means capturing the structure and rhythms, the tone and texture, and the lexical choices --in sum, the particular idiom-- of Zola's novel, as well as preserving the "feel" of the social context out of which the novel emerged and which it represents."

In addition to being editor of the Australian Journal of French Studies, Nelson co-founded the journal Romance Studies

Romance studies

Romance studies is an umbrella academic discipline that covers the study of the languages, literatures, and cultures of areas that speak a Romance language. Romance studies departments usually include the study of Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese...

, edit the monograph series Monash Romance Studies, and is President of AALITRA (the Australian Association for Literary Translation).

Works

Author

• Zola and the Bourgeoisie: A Study of Themes and Techniques in Les Rougon (1982)
• Émile Zola: A Selective and Analytical Bibliography
• Naturalism in the European novel: new critical perspectives‎ (1992)

Editor

• The Cambridge Companion to Zola (2007)

Translator

• The Ladies' Paradise (Oxford 1995)
• The Kill
  La Curée
  La Curée is the second novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. It deals with property speculation and the lives of the extremely wealthy Nouveau riche of the Second French Empire, against the backdrop of Baron Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris in the 1850s and...
  
  (Oxford 2004)
• The Belly of Paris (Oxford 2007)
• Pot Luck
  Pot-Bouille
  Pot-Bouille is the tenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It was serialized between January and April 1882 in the periodical Le Gaulois before being published in book form by Charpentier in 1883....
  
  (Oxford 1999)