The Fortune of the Rougons, originally published in 1871, is the first novel in �mile Zola's monumental twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. The novel is partly an origin story, with a huge cast of characters swarming around - many of whom become the central figures of later novels in the series - and partly an account of the December 1851 coup d'�tat that created the French Second Empire under Napoleon III as experienced in a large provincial town in southern France. The title refers not only to the "fortune" chased by protagonists Pierre and Felicit� Rougon, but also to the fortunes of the various disparate family members Zola introduces, whose lives are of central importance to later books in the series.