“TERRIBLY DEFAMATORY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 318, 31 March 1928, Page 12

“TERRIBLY DEFAMATORY”

SOME LETTERS OF ZOLA CHILDREN SEEK PUBLICATION Emile Zola’s children, legitimatized after his death by his legal wife who was not their mother, are threatening to bring action in court for recovery from the custody of the Concourt Academy of letters -written by Zola to Edmund and Jules de Concourt, which, with the Concourts’ diary, are being kept secret by the literary executors because they fear publication would cause embarrassment of many who were friends of the Concourt brothers and to their descendants. Those few who have read the famous journal of the brothers declare positively that the time for publication is far from being ripe, even though the period of 20 years during which the Concourts stipulated publication should be withheld is now past. There are passages, it is stated, which are terribly defamatory to many famous Frenchmen, both living and dead, for the Concourts did not scruple to set down all the gossip of their day, which was sometimes more than indiscreet. Publication would, it is said, start all kinds of legal actions for libel against the publishers and on that ground the Ministry of Education, which is ultimately responsible, has consented to delay at the request of ten members of the Concourt Academy who are literary executors. Zola’s children, however, claim that th’s ruling does not apply to the letters which their father wrote and they are demanding their release for publication. J. H. Rosny, president of the academy, has refused on the ground that if the Zola letters were published the heirs of Hugo, Flaubert, de Maupassant, and all others would immediately demand delivery of their letters, and a new campaign would start for publication of the whole journal of the famous brothers.