Content Warning: This letter includes references to antisemitism.

Émile Zola wrote J’Accuse…! in response to the Dreyfus Affair, a highly significant socio-political controversy that took hold of French discourse during the mid-late 1890s. News of the affair and the various trials populated a number of newspapers, which often had a strong bias to one side or the other. Dreyfusard newspapers advocated on behalf of Dreyfus and his cause, while the anti-Dreyfusard newspapers pushed forth the narrative of his guilt. Zola, as a famous author and influential supporter of Dreyfus, penned this letter to share both his perspective on the affair and the facts of the case as he understood them.

At its core, Zola’s letter is an argumentative essay, intended to persuade his audience of Dreyfus’s innocence and Esterhazy’s guilt. Zola adopted the method of the open letter, a letter that is ostensibly addressed to a specific person (normally in a position of power or influence) but which is published in a journal or newspaper (in this case the liberal Parisian newspaper L’Aurore) and intended for a public audience.