[AFFAIRE DREYFUS] Émile ZOLA (L’Aurore, 13 janvier 1898) 

[AFFAIRE DREYFUS] Émile ZOLA (L’Aurore, 13 janvier 1898) 

First edition of the 87th issue of journal L’Aurore
« J’Accuse…  !  » – Lettre au président de la République par Émile Zola
[Paris, 13th January 1898], 4 p. in-plano
Apart from some light flaws, discreet repairs, traces of folds and browning in places, remarkable state of preservation, a complete copy of its four pages.
Made-to-measure frame, museum glass, floating document on Marie-Louise “chestnut”, black oak frame

First copy of the legendary « J’Accuse…  !  », starting with Zola’s open letter to the president of the Republic Felix Faure

ONE OF THE FEW WELL-PRESERVED EXAMPLES

“The shock was so extraordinary that Paris almost turned upside down” (Charles Péguy)
This letter-manifesto of the writer appeared in six columns, on the front page of the newspaper L’Aurore, on January 13, 1898. Its title: “J’accuse…!”, huge and provocative, is an idea of Georges Clemenceau.

Émile Zola’s indictment:
The day after Estherazy’s acquittal, on January 10, 1898, the legal voice of the revision of the Dreyfus trial seemed doomed. In his open letter to the President of the Republic, Félix Faure, himself an anti-Dreyfusard, Zola set out to dismantle the fabricated procedure point by point. Denouncing what he described as “the greatest iniquity of the century”, he implicated by name the generals, experts in writing and attacked the general staff and the councils of war of 1894 and 1898. His famous anaphora “J’accuse” at the beginning of each of the last paragraphs concludes his implacable indictment.

He knows that he will be prosecuted, that is his goal: “Let them dare to bring me before the Assize Court and let the investigation take place in broad daylight! I’m waiting.”
Zola caused a shock wave that would turn history upside down and whose resonances continue to reach us today.

The print run of 300,000 copies (ten times more than usual) sold out immediately.
Printed on poor quality newsprint, very few complete copies in good condition have come down to us.