This volume, “Thérèse Raquin,” was Zola’s third book, but it was the one that first gave him notoriety, and made him somebody, as the saying goes.
While still a clerk at Hachette’s at eight pounds a month, engaged in checking and perusing advertisements and press notices, he had already in 1864 published the first series of “Les Contes a Ninon”--a reprint of short stor...