Victor Hugo

Les Misérables

Completed in exile in 1862: over 100 years later a world success once more, as a musical.

💡 Did you know? „Les Misérables“ later became one of the most successful musicals in the world.

Javert

A bishop's silver candlesticks convert Valjean to goodness: Javert, in the end, is broken by his mercy.

💡 Did you know? Javert's rigid sense of justice shatters when Valjean's mercy throws him completely off course.

Quasimodo

He loves beautiful Esmeralda; the cathedral itself is the secret protagonist: the novel launched its rescue.

💡 Did you know? The novel saved the crumbling Notre-Dame cathedral from demolition and prompted its restoration.

Jersey and Guernsey

From there he bombarded Napoleon III with satires: 'Napoléon le Petit'.

💡 Did you know? From exile on Guernsey, Hugo became France's moral voice against Napoleon III.

Napoleon III

Hugo mocked him as 'Napoléon le Petit': Napoleon the Small.

💡 Did you know? Hugo refused to return under the dictator: „If only one remains, I shall be that one.“

Romanticism

The battle over his drama 'Hernani' (1830) became the decisive engagement against classicist rules.

💡 Did you know? The riotous 1830 premiere of his drama „Hernani“ is seen as Romanticism's victory over Classicism.

Gavroche

His name became, in French, the word for a cheeky street boy.

💡 Did you know? The cheeky street urchin Gavroche became a symbol of the insurgent Parisian people.

? and !

Hugo thus asked how 'Les Misérables' was selling: the reply announced the triumph.

💡 Did you know? The anecdote is well attested but not fully verified: too good to leave out.

the Panthéon

The state decreed national mourning: the coffin lay a night beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

💡 Did you know? Some two million people lined the streets of Paris for Hugo's state funeral in 1885.

the death penalty

As deputy and senator he also fought poverty and championed free education.

💡 Did you know? Hugo campaigned passionately all his life against the death penalty and for the poor.

Besançon

The son of a Napoleonic general, as a teenager he resolved to be 'Chateaubriand or nothing'.

💡 Did you know? Hugo was also a gifted draughtsman: thousands of darkly fantastical ink drawings survive.

Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo (1802 to 1885) was the leading French poet and novelist of Romanticism. With „Les Misérables“ and „The Hunchback of Notre-Dame“ he created world classics.

💡 Did you know? In his lifetime Hugo was a kind of national treasure: all France mourned his death, and Paris named a grand boulevard after him.