Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1831)
Gothic novel of the bell-ringer Quasimodo, the dancer Esmeralda and the archdeacon Frollo in 15th-century Paris
Literature · Novelists
Victor Hugo
1802–1885 · French
Romanticism
Victor Hugo was the leading figure of French Romanticism: poet, dramatist, novelist and politician. He wrote Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) and Les Misérables, and his play Hernani sparked a famous battle between Romantics and Classicists in 1830. An opponent of Napoleon III, he spent nearly two decades in exile in the Channel Islands and on his death was given a state funeral and buried in the Panthéon.
How to spot them
- ▸Les Misérables: Jean Valjean, Javert, Fantine, Cosette, Gavroche and the Thénardiers
- ▸Notre-Dame de Paris: Quasimodo, Esmeralda and Claude Frollo
- ▸The 'battle of Hernani' (1830) and the Preface to Cromwell, manifesto of French Romantic drama
- ▸Exile on Jersey and then Guernsey (Hauteville House) during the Second Empire
- ▸Lay in state beneath the Arc de Triomphe before burial in the Panthéon (1885)
Key works
Les Misérables (1862)
Epic of ex-convict Jean Valjean, pursued by Inspector Javert, culminating in the Paris June Rebellion of 1832
Hernani (1830)
Romantic verse drama whose premiere provoked the 'bataille d'Hernani'
Les Contemplations (1856)
Poetry collection shaped by grief for his daughter Léopoldine, drowned at Villequier in 1843
Les Châtiments (1853)
Satirical poems attacking Napoleon III, written in exile
The Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la mer) (1866)
Novel set on Guernsey, dedicated to the island; the hero Gilliatt battles a giant octopus
Le Roi s'amuse (1832)
Play banned after one performance; the source of Verdi's opera Rigoletto
The Man Who Laughs (L'Homme qui rit) (1869)
Novel about Gwynplaine, whose face was mutilated into a permanent grin
Key ideas
- The Preface to Cromwell (1827) rejected classical unities and championed mixing the sublime and the grotesque
- Les Misérables is a vast argument about poverty, justice, redemption and the law
- Notre-Dame de Paris helped spark a campaign to preserve Gothic architecture in France
- A committed opponent of the death penalty, argued in The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829)
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Besançon, son of a Napoleonic general
- •Elected to the Académie française in 1841 and made a peer of France in 1845
- •Went into exile after Louis-Napoleon's coup of December 1851, returning only in 1870 after the fall of the Second Empire
- •Coined the insult 'Napoléon le Petit' (Napoleon the Little) for Napoleon III in a pamphlet of 1852
- •Jean Valjean's prisoner number is 24601; he was imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread
- •His long-standing mistress was the actress Juliette Drouet
- •Legend says the shortest correspondence ever was Hugo's telegram '?' to his publisher about sales of Les Misérables, answered with '!'
- •He is revered as a saint in the Vietnamese Cao Dai religion
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Sources
- Graham Robb — Victor Hugo: A Biography