La Terre is a novel by Émile Zola, published in 1887. It is the fifteenth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. The action takes place in a rural community in the Beauce, an area in central France west of Paris. The novel is connected to others in the series by the protagonist, Jean Macquart, whose childhood in the south of France was recounted in La Fortune des Rougon, and who goes on to feature prominently in the later novel La Débâcle.

Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire, it follows the lives of the members of the two titular branches of a fictional family living during the Second French Empire (1852–1870) and is one of the most prominent works of the French naturalism literary movement.