Meetings organised by the Society
The Society normally holds several activities each year, at roughly 2-monthly intervals, in addition to its occasional Colloquia and Saturday Seminars. Regular items include:
~ the Annual Dinner 'Avec Zola à table' in the Spring
~ a group visit to the 'Pélerinage de Médan on the first Sunday in October
~ the AGM towards the end of the year.
The Covid crisis has caused a break the pattern but the Society is now starting to resume something like 'normal business'.
The followng list of past events gives some idea of the range and variety of our activities.
2021
November 2021: Making sense of place: a short walk in Paris with Dickens' Uncommercial Traveller by John Edmondson.
October 2021: Outing to Zola’s House at Médan and the annual ‘pilgrimage’
September 2021: Visit to Chawton House and Chawton Village
January 2021: Book Club resumed, meeting monthly on Zoom until further notice, until face-to-face meetings are again possible.
2020
January 2020: 'Open House' at No. 35: Geneeral discussions on Zola's life and work.
Restrictions arising from the Covid pandemic prevented any further meetings in 2020. In particular the Saturday Seminar, Zola’s Women, planned for 18 April had to be cancelled. Three of the papers that would have been presented were:
~ On the scent: the revelatory nature of fragrance for the women of The Rougon-Macquart (Danielle Bishop);
~ Three Lives: La Maheude, Lisa Quenu, Renée Saccard (Keith Howell);
~Saints and Sinners in Zola’s The Dream [Le Rêve] (Valerie Minogue).
2019
November 2019: AGM followed by a screening of the 1955 film Gervaise.
October 2019: 'Pélerinage' to Médan
May 2019: Annual Dinner
April 2019: Seminar: French Politics in the time of Zola
February 2019: Listen to Nana: Acoustic features of Zola, literary soundtracks by Russell Couusins
2018
November 2018: AGM and talk on Escoffier by David King
October 2018: 'Pélerinage' to Médan
July 2018: Outing
June 2018 :Colloque in Lille
April 2018: Annual Dinner
February 2018: talk on L’Oeuvre by Hélène Sicard-Cowan
2017
December 2017: AGM followed by general discussions on the latest adaptation of Therese Raquin ; and Caricatures of Zola [illustrated] by Keith Howell
October 2017: 'Pélerinage' to Médan
June 2017: Extracts from Renoir's La Bête humaine
May 2017: Outing to William Morris' House in Kelmscott
April 2017: Annual Dinner
March 2017: Seminar: Zola: Clothes and Character
February 2017: Les Soirées de Médan by David King
2016
December 2016; AGM followed by William Morris and Zola by the reverend Philip Morse
October 2016: 'Pélerinage' to Médan
June 2016: Three young film makers discusssed plans for a new film, freely adapted from Nana; followed by the opening scenes of Renoir's silent film Nana
April 2016: Annual Dinner
March 2016: Seminar: Scenes of Domestic Life
January 2016: Zola's London [illustrated] by David King
2015
December 2015 :AGM followed by 'Three sheets in the wind. The decline and fall of a Parisian washerwoman', an illustrated talk by Keith Howell.
October 2015: 'Pélerinage' to Médan
June 2015: Zola and Cinema by Russell Cousins
April 2015: Annual Dinner
March 2015: Seminar: Zola's priests
February 2015: Zola and Vizetelly A translator's nightmare or: the nightmare of a translator by Geoff Woollen
2014
December 2014: AGM followed by talk by Keith Howell on 'Adultery, Madness and Ghostly Revenge'
October 2014: 'Pélerinage' to Médan
July 2014: Outing
April 2014: Annual Dinner
March 2014: Seminar: Paris, Babylon, the Vices of Empire
2013
November 2010: Annual General Meetingf ollowed at 7pm by a talk by Patrick Pollard: 'Travelling by train with Zola'
October 2013: Colloquium: Rethinking the Real – Fiction, Art and Theatre in the time of Émile Zola
October 2013: Pélérinage de Médan
June 2013: a talk by Professor Robert Lethbridge on 'Zola's Manets'
April 2013: Annual Dinner
February 2013: talk by David King on Chez Maxim - Maxim's the celebrated Parisian restaurant of the 19th century
2012
December 2012: AGM followed by readings in French and English, with discussion on two great financial swindlers, Zola's Saccard (in L'Argent) and Trollope's Melmotte (in The Way We Live Now)v
October 2012: Pilgrimage to Médan
July 2012: Outing to Darwin’s House
June 2012: ‘Toulouse-Lautrec’, a talk by David King
March 2012: Annual Dinner
February 2012: Seminar: 'Seeing Life... with Zola and his contemporaries'
* * *