Paul Alexis was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 novelist, dramatist, and journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

. He is best remembered today as the friend and biographer of Émile 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...

.

Life

Alexis was born at Aix-en-Provence

Aix-en-Provence

Aix , or Aix-en-Provence to distinguish it from other cities built over hot springs, is a city-commune in southern France, some north of Marseille. It is in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, in the département of Bouches-du-Rhône, of which it is a subprefecture. The population of Aix is...

. He attended the Collège Bourbon where he first learned of Zola, who was himself a graduate. At the direction of his parents he studied law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 at the University of Aix, but he longed for the life of a writer, and finally left Aix-en-Provence for Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. He arrived in the capital in 1869 where he quickly became acquainted with Zola and his family. He contributed articles to a number of newspapers including L'Avenir national, La Cloche, Le Corsaire, Le Cri du peuple (under the pseudonym Trublot), Gil Blas,, Le Journal, La Réforme, Le Recueil, and Le Voltaire. He wrote novels in the naturalist

Naturalism (literature)

Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...

 style as well as several plays

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

, some of which were written in collaboration with Oscar Méténier

Oscar Méténier

Oscar Méténier was a French playwright and novelist. In 1897 he founded Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Paris, planning it as a space for naturalist performance.-Life:...

.

In 1875 he was briefly incarcerated on the mistaken suspicion of being a Communard who as such would have faced the prospect of life in prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

, but Zola was able to use his influence to have him released.

Along with J.-K. Huysmans, Henri Céard, Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....

, Léon Hennique, and Zola, he formed part of the groupe des Médan which was responsible for publishing Les Soirées de Médan

Les Soirées de Médan

Les Soirées de Médan is a collection of six short stories by six different writers associated with Naturalism, first published in 1880. All the stories concern the Franco-Prussian War...

in 1880, a collection of six naturalist stories dealing with the Franco-Prussian War

Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

. Alexis' contribution was the story Après la bataille ("After the Battle").

Alexis was also a great admirer of Flaubert and friend to Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...

. Céard called him "Zola's shadow". Cézanne painted a portrait of them together entitled Paul Alexis reading to Zola.

After his wife Marie died of typhoid fever

Typhoid fever

Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...

 in 1900, he sank into alcoholism

Alcoholism

Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

 and eventually succumbed to an aneurysm

Aneurysm

An aneurysm or aneurism is a localized, blood-filled balloon-like bulge in the wall of a blood vessel. Aneurysms can commonly occur in arteries at the base of the brain and an aortic aneurysm occurs in the main artery carrying blood from the left ventricle of the heart...

, dying at Levallois-Perret

Levallois-Perret

Levallois-Perret is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris.-Name:The name Levallois-Perret comes from two housing developments, Champerret and Village Levallois , and which resulted in the incorporation of the...

. He was survived by two daughters, Paule and Marthe.

Quotes

• ”Naturalism (is) not dead.” (“Naturalisme pas mort.”)

On Zola:

• “He is as ambitious and domineering in the intellectual realm as he is soft and conciliatory in every other.”

• “He yields points grudgingly and never on the spot. Not being right causes him intense pain. So deeply rooted is this rivalrous spirit that it will seize the most trivial pretext to manifest itself. Thus, I have sometimes played chess with him and won. He confesses that, momentarily, his defeat irks him as much as if someone denied him literary talent.”

• "If only you knew all that I owe this man! What would I be today without him? I have no doubt that the little bit of notoriety I and a few others enjoy is a spark from the blaze this extraordinary man has created around himself! Reviled, misunderstood, ignored, he fought the good fight all alone and suffered the anguish of it . . . whilst we, like young men of means who will inherit a fortune they didn’t earn, all we had to do was show up. Even before we’ve sowed, we’ve harvested!”

Novels

• La Fin de Lucie Pellegrin (1880)
• Après la bataille (as part of Les Soirées de Médan) (1880)
• Le Besoin d'aimer (1885)
• Un amour platonique (1886)
• Le Collage (1883)
• Les Femmes du père Lefèvre (1886)
• L'Infortune de monsieur Fraque (1887)
• L'Education amoureuse (1890)
• Madame Meuriot, mœurs parisiennes (1890)
• Trente romans ; Le cœur ; La chair ; L'esprit (1895)
• La Comtesse. Treize symboles. Quelques originaux (1897)
• Le Collage (1899)
• Vallobra (1901)

Drama

• Celle qu'on n'épouse pas (1879)
• La Fin de Lucie Pellegrin (1888)
• Les Frères Zemganno (1890)
• Monsieur Betsy (1890)
• Charles Demailly (1892)
• La Provinciale (1893)

Letters and Memoirs

• Émile Zola : notes d'un ami (1882)
• «Naturalisme pas mort» : lettres inédites de Paul Alexis à Émile Zola, 1871-1900 (1971)

External links

• Works by or about Paul Alexis at Internet Archive
  Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
  
  (scanned books original editions color illustrated)