The pit, the company, the hunger, and the violence when it comes. Zola went down a mine at Anzin and talked to the men; the crowd scenes are the best in nineteenth-century fiction, and at his funeral a delegation of miners followed the coffin chanting "Germinal!". This edition includes Havelock Ellis's translation and a gallery of 56 bound plates, among them paintings by Munch, Degas and Langlois.