Brian Nelson is Emeritus Professor of French Studies and Translation Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has been editor of the Australian Journal of French Studies since 2002. His publications include The Cambridge Companion to Zola (CUP, 20017), Zola and the Bourgeoisie (Palgrave Macmillan, 1983), and translations of Earth, The Fortune of the Rougons, The Belly of Paris, The Kill, Pot Luck, and The Ladies' Paradise for Oxford World's Classics. He was awarded the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Translation in 2015. His most recent critical work is The Cambridge Introduction to French Literature (CUP, 2015).

"It is easy to savor certain installments in isolation [...] But to read through the Rougon-Macquart in Oxford's fine new translations - fourteen of the twenty volumes retranslated since 2000, seven in the last four years - is to see the mosaic that only Zola's full scheme makes possible." -- Aaron Matz, The New York Review of Books

"I'm going to celebrate the 21st century with a re-read of His Excellency Eugène Rougon." -- Swiftly Tilting Planet