The Victorian French were regarded as sleazy sex fiends who tolerated the most prurient and degrading of books. In France not one writer or publisher was locked up for the propagation of degeneracy. Some folk raised a hullabaloo but they made their point without anyone becoming incarcerated. In England, however, the man who had the gall to publish the great French homme des lettres Emile Zola ended up on porridge for 12 weeks. Eileen Horne tells the tale of publisher Henry Vizetelly and his family and their battle for the anti-censorial cause. She tells it as if she knew them intimately and she makes them out to be saintly, angelic, naive and one-dimensional. Also included, in Horne's inside-info style, are details of how the middle-aged Zola stunned his wife by having a mistress and two children. The whole yarn is very interesting and complemented by excellent illustrations. The style it is told in is less engaging.
