![]() ![]() And, in Germinal, we encounter the great work of proletarian naturalism. Like his predecessor Honoré de Balzac, Émile Zola set out to encompass the busy breadth of French society in a huge fictional sequence. Germinal: Gérard Depardieu in the 1993 film version. The ripping novel, which touches upon the Chartists and the rise of trade unions, has, astonishingly, not been adapted for TV in 60 years. Mill owners and Tory newspapers were furious about the book’s apparent hostility to the capitalist enterprise, but it became a popular success and was translated into many languages. Novels Cranford and North and South are better known, but Mrs Gaskell’s angry tale of working-class life in Manchester – a locale that was inspiring Friedrich Engels as the novelist was at work – is the one that yells for inclusion on this list. Pretty much everything of value has been left out. ![]() It is, rather, a scattershot celebration of the progressive impulse over a century or two. ![]() Nor does it claim to be the best work by artists who, either sporadically or consistently, stuck to the radical lathe. Any such attempt that sought to confine itself to ordinary limits – fewer than 1,000 entries, say – would struggle to even skirt comprehensiveness. This is not a May Day list of the best left-wing art. ![]()
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