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Devil's Island

4 stories from this place.

The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · L'Aurore office, Paris

The Open Letter Émile Zola Published on the Front Page of L'Aurore on 13 January 1898 That Divided France for a Decade

Émile Zola's letter J'Accuse...! appeared on the front page of the Paris newspaper L'Aurore on 13 January 1898, naming seven French Army officers and accusing them of the deliberate frame-up of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. The print run was 300,000 copies — ten times the paper's normal sale. Zola was convicted of libel within a month and fled to England. The letter is conventionally the founding document of the modern public intellectual.

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The Cabinet June 24, 2026 · Paris (Lucie Dreyfus's home)

The Wife Who Wrote to Devil's Island for Five Years and Did Not Know If the Letters Were Reaching Anyone

While [Alfred Dreyfus was held in solitary confinement on Devil's Island](/articles/dreyfus-devils-island), his wife Lucie wrote to him every week and waited months for replies. Most of her letters were heavily censored by the colonial administration before they reached him. Most of his were censored before they reached her. They corresponded for almost five years across a 7,000-kilometre gap without knowing whether the other was still alive.

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