Zola moved back to Paris with his mother in 1858 but his early experiences there were unhappy and he had great difficulty settling down. He had few friends - he had left all his acquaintances in the south - and little academic success, failing the baccalauréat twice. Consequently he found great difficulty in finding himself a job and he spent two years in a state of considerable poverty - an experience which, like his family background, was to find expression in some of his novels.
He eked out of living of some poverty working as a part-time clerk until 1862 when he found a job with the publisher Hachette. This new job gave him the time and the resources to begin writing, composing short stories, serials and articles for newspapers.
In 1866 Zola met Alexandrine Gabrielle Meley, a woman from the urban working classes who, in 1870, he eventually married. She was a notable hostess and in this way, the Zola home became the centre for the up and coming writers who were to become known as the école naturaliste or naturalist school.
He died in 1902 of carbon monoxide poisoning from a blocked stove in what some claimed were suspicious circumstances.