Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo (1802-1885), was a French author. The best of his novels are animated by a humanitarian spirit and a strong concern for social, economic, and political justice. “Les Miserables” (1862) is about Jean Valjean, a peasant who tries to rehabilitate himself after being imprisoned 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. The main character in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1831) is Quasimodo, a deformed bellringer in the Paris cathedral. He repays the kindness of Esmeralda by saving her from the mob. He hurls from the cathedral’s tower the archdeacon who had sent her to the gallows.

In the preface to his unproduced play “Cromwell” (1827), Hugo provided a manifesto to the French Romanticists whose undisputed leader he became. He advocated a departure from rigid classical rules, calling for down-to-earth dialogue and a mingling of the serious and comic, the beautiful and ugly. He admired Shakespeare’s work. 

Hugo’s poetry sometimes tends to be flowery and bombastic, but he was a master of verse forms. Rhetorical brilliance and rich imagery characterize much of his work. Satirical jibes against Napoleon III in “The Chastisements (1853) reveal the militant republican spirit that caused Hugo to be hailed as “Old Man Republic.”

King Louis XVIII, impressed by Hugo’s first book of poems, granted him a small pension upon his marriage in 1822. This was increased after the publication of “Han d’Islande” (1823) a novel. Hugo was elected to the French Academy in 1841. He was a national idol during his later years, and when he died his body was placed in the Pantheon.