Victor-Marie Hugo (French pronunciation: [viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo]) was born in Besancon, France, on 26th February, 1802. The son of a general, Hugo was educated in Paris and Madrid.
Although trained as a lawyer, Hugo wanted to be a writer and as well as producing poems and plays, he founded and edited a literary journal Conservateur Littéraire (1819-21). Hugo was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France.
In France, Hugo’s literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris(also known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame).
Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo’s views refined as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon.
Hugo’s first book of poems, Odes et Ballades, was published in 1822. This was followed by Han d’Islande (1823), Nouvelles Odes (1824), Bug-Jagal (1824) and a second set of Odes et Ballades (1826).
Hugo political beliefs became increasingly more radical and in 1827 he published the verse drama, Cromwell. In the play’s long preface, Hugo argued that literature should deal with the contradictions of human existence. This was followed by Orientales (1828), The Last Days of a Condemned (1829), a protest novel about capital punishment, and Hernani (1830), a play about an outlaw in conflict with society.
In 1831 Hugo published his novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831). Set in medieval Paris, the book’s central character, Quasimodo, captured the public’s imagination and the book became a great success. Over the next few years Hugo wrote several plays including The King’s Fool (1832), Angelo, Tyrant of Padua (1835) and Ruy Blas (1838). He also published four books of poems: Autumn Leaves (1831), Songs of Twilight (1835), Inner Voices (1837) and Sunlight and Shadows (1840).
Hugo’s became increasingly involved in republican politics and after the 1848 Revolution he was elected a deputy for Paris in the Constituent Assembly. Hugo became interested in the philosophy of pacifism and in 1851 took part in the International Peace Congress in Paris where he called for the creation of a United States of Europe. Hugo was also a member of the Legislative Assembly but was forced to flee the country in 1852 after Emperor Napoleon III gained power.
Hugo lived in Brussels for a year before moving to the island of Jersey in the English Channel. Expelled from Jersey in 1855, Hugo went to live on the neighbouring island of Guernsey.
In exile Hugo produced Napoléon le Petit (1852), Les Châtiments (1853), Les Contemplations (1856) and the extremely popular novel, Les Misérables (1862), a story of a man who has been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread.
Hugo’s later works included the essay, William Shakespeare (1864) and three novels, The Toilers of the Sea (1866), The Man Who Laughs (1869) and Ninety-Three (1874). Victor Hugo died in Paris on 22nd May, 1885.
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His Life
Hugo was the third, illegitimate, son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (1774–1828) and Sophie Trébuchet (1772–1821); his brothers were Abel Joseph Hugo (1798–1855) and Eugène Hugo (1800–1837). He was born in 1802 in Besançon (in the region of Franche-Comté) and lived in France for the majority of his life. However, he decided to live in exile as a result of Napoleon III’s Coup d’état at the end of 1851. Hugo lived briefly in Brussels (1851) then moved to the Channel Islands, firstly to Jersey (1852–55) and then to the smaller island of Guernsey (1855–1870). Although a general amnesty was proclaimed by Napoleon III in 1859; Hugo stayed in exile, only ending it when Napoleon III was forced from power as a result of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Hugo returned again to Guernsey (1872–73), after suffering through the Siege of Paris, before finally returning to France for the remainder of his life.
Hugo’s early childhood was marked by great events. Napoléon was proclaimed Emperor two years after Hugo’s birth, and the Bourbon Monarchy was restored before his thirteenth birthday. The opposing political and religious views of Hugo’s parents reflected the forces that would battle for supremacy in France throughout his life: Hugo’s father was an officer who ranked very high in Napoleon’s army until he failed in Spain (one of the reasons why his name is not present on the Arc de Triomphe). He was an atheist republican who considered Napoléon a hero; his mother was an extreme Catholic Royalist who is believed to have taken as her lover General Victor Lahorie, executed in 1812 for plotting against Napoléon. Since Hugo’s father, Joseph, was an officer, they moved frequently and Hugo learned much from these travels. On his family’s journey to Naples, he saw the vast Alpine passes and the snowy peaks, the magnificently blue Mediterranean, and Rome during its festivities. Though he was only nearly six at the time, he remembered the half-year-long trip vividly. They stayed in Naples for a few months and then headed back to Paris.
Sophie followed her husband to posts in Italy (where Léopold served as a governor of a province near Naples) and Spain (where he took charge of three Spanish provinces). Weary of the constant moving required by military life, and at odds with her husband’s lack of Catholic beliefs, Sophie separated temporarily from Léopold in 1803 and settled in Paris. Thereafter she dominated Hugo’s education and upbringing. As a result, Hugo’s early work in poetry and fiction reflect a passionate devotion to both King and Faith. It was only later, during the events leading up to France’s 1848 Revolution, that he would begin to rebel against his Catholic Royalist education and instead champion Republicanism and Freethought.
Young Victor fell in love and against his mother’s wishes, became secretly engaged to his childhood friend Adèle Foucher (1803–1868).
Unusually close to his mother, he married Adèle (in 1822) only after his mother’s death in 1821. They had their first child Léopold in 1823, but the boy died in infancy. Hugo’s other children were Léopoldine (28 August 1824), Charles (4 November 1826), François-Victor (28 October 1828) and Adèle (24 August 1830).
Hugo published his first novel the following year (Han d’Islande, 1823), and his second three years later (Bug-Jargal, 1826). Between 1829 and 1840 he would publish five more volumes of poetry (Les Orientales, 1829; Les Feuilles d’automne, 1831; Les Chants du crépuscule, 1835; Les Voix intérieures, 1837; and Les Rayons et les ombres, 1840), cementing his reputation as one of the greatest elegiac and lyric poets of his time.
Illustration by Luc-Olivier Merson for Notre Dame de Paris (1881) showing the recently restored galerie des chimères
Victor Hugo was devastated when his oldest and favorite daughter, Léopoldine, died at age 19 in 1843, shortly after her marriage. She drowned in the Seine at Villequier, pulled down by her heavy skirts, when a boat overturned. Her young husband Charles Vacquerie also died trying to save her. Victor Hugo was traveling with his mistress at the time in the south of France, and learned about Léopoldine’s death from a newspaper as he sat in a cafe. He describes his shock and grief in his poem À Villequier:
Hélas ! vers le passé tournant un oeil d’envie,
Sans que rien ici-bas puisse m’en consoler,
Je regarde toujours ce moment de ma vie
Où je l’ai vue ouvrir son aile et s’envoler !
Je verrai cet instant jusqu’à ce que je meure,
L’instant, pleurs superflus !
Où je criai : L’enfant que j’avais tout à l’heure,
Quoi donc ! je ne l’ai plus !
Alas! turning an envious eye towards the past,
unconsolable by anything on earth,
I keep looking at that moment of my life
when I saw her open her wings and fly away!
I will see that instant until I die,
that instant—too much for tears!
when I cried out: “The child that I had just now–
what! I don’t have her any more!”
He wrote many poems afterwards about his daughter’s life and death, and at least one biographer claims he never completely recovered from it. His most famous poem is probably Demain, dès l’aube, in which he describes visiting her grave.
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Writings
Like many young writers of his generation, Hugo was profoundly influenced by François-René de Chateaubriand, the famous figure in the literary movement of Romanticism and France’s preëminent literary figure during the early 19th century. In his youth, Hugo resolved to be “Chateaubriand or nothing,” and his life would come to parallel that of his predecessor in many ways. Like Chateaubriand, Hugo would further the cause of Romanticism, become involved in politics as a champion of Republicanism, and be forced into exile due to his political stances. The precocious passion and eloquence of Hugo’s early work brought success and fame at an early age. His first collection of poetry (Odes et poésies diverses) was published in 1822, when Hugo was only twenty years old, and earned him a royal pension from Louis XVIII. Though the poems were admired for their spontaneous fervor and fluency, it was the collection that followed four years later in 1826 (Odes et Ballades) that revealed Hugo to be a great poet, a natural master of lyric and creative song.
Victor Hugo’s first mature work of fiction appeared in 1829, and reflected the acute social conscience that would infuse his later work. Le Dernier jour d’un condamné (The Last Day of a Condemned Man) would have a profound influence on later writers such as Albert Camus, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Claude Gueux, a documentary short story about a real-life murderer who had been executed in France, appeared in 1834, and was later considered by Hugo himself to be a precursor to his great work on social injustice, Les Misérables. But Hugo’s first full-length novel would be the enormously successful Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), which was published in 1831 and quickly translated into other languages across Europe. One of the effects of the novel was to shame the City of Paris into restoring the much-neglected Cathedral of Notre Dame, which was attracting thousands of tourists who had read the popular novel. The book also inspired a renewed appreciation for pre-renaissance buildings, which thereafter began to be actively preserved.
Hugo began planning a major novel about social misery and injustice as early as the 1830s, but it would take a full 17 years for Les Misérables, to be realized and finally published in 1862. Hugo was acutely aware of the quality of the novel and publication of the work went to the highest bidder. The Belgian publishing house Lacroix and Verboeckhoven undertook a marketing campaign unusual for the time, issuing press releases about the work a full six months before the launch. It also initially published only the first part of the novel (“Fantine”), which was launched simultaneously in major cities. Installments of the book sold out within hours, and had enormous impact on French society. The critical establishment was generally hostile to the novel; Taine found it insincere, Barbey d’Aurevilly complained of its vulgarity, Flaubert found within it “neither truth nor greatness”, the Goncourts lambasted its artificiality, and Baudelaire – despite giving favorable reviews in newspapers – castigated it in private as “tasteless and inept.” Les Misérables proved popular enough with the masses that the issues it highlighted were soon on the agenda of the French National Assembly. Today the novel remains his most enduringly popular work. It is popular worldwide, has been adapted for cinema, television and stage shows.
The shortest correspondence in history is said to have been between Hugo and his publisher Hurst & Blackett in 1862. It is said Hugo was on vacation when Les Misérables (which is over 1200 pages) was published. He sent a letter containing the single-character message ‘?’ to his publisher, who replied with a single ‘!’.
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His last will
He left a set of five sentences as his last will to be officially published :
« Je donne cinquante mille francs aux pauvres. Je veux être enterré dans leur corbillard.
Je refuse l’oraison de toutes les Eglises. Je demande une prière à toutes les âmes.
Je crois en Dieu. »
(I leave 50 000 francs to the poor. I want to be buried in their hearse.
I refuse [funeral] orations of all churches. I beg a prayer to all souls.
I believe in God.)
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Most widely held works by Victor Hugo
Les misérables
2,231 editions published between 1800 and 2010 in 56 languages and held by 6,541 libraries worldwide
Story of Valjean, the ex-convict who rises against all odds from galley slave to mayor, and the fanatical police inspector who dedicates his life to recapturing Valjean.
The hunchback of Notre Dame
1,574 editions published between 1800 and 2010 in 45 languages and held by 6,586 libraries worldwide
The tale of the hunchback bellringer of medieval Notre Dame, Quasimodo, whose love for the gypsy dancer, Esmeralda, had tragic consequences.
The toilers of the sea
568 editions published between 1800 and 2008 in 23 languages and held by 2,359 libraries worldwide
This paperback original is a new translation of Hugo’s great novel of the sea and includes comprehensive endnotes and Hugo’s illustrations, which have never been reproduced in any edition of this monumental work.
Ninety-three
654 editions published between 1800 and 2008 in 27 languages and held by 2,078 libraries worldwide
It is the year 1793 and a new and terrible phase of the French Revolution is underway. Louis XVI has been sentenced to the scaffold and the guillotine has become an efficient agent of the Terror.
Hernani
487 editions published between 1800 and 2009 in 19 languages and held by 1,521 libraries worldwide
“Trois hommes désirent la même femme, doña Sol. Le roi des Castilles, don Carlos, est décidé à en faire sa favorite; le vieux don Ruy Gomez s’apprête à l’épouse; Hernani, chef d’une bande d’insurgés, ne peut vivre sans elle qui ne peut vivre sans lui.”–p. 11.
Ruy Blas
484 editions published between 1800 and 2010 in 14 languages and held by 1,336 libraries worldwide
The story centers around a practical joke played on the queen by Don Sallusto for revenge. Knowing that one of his slaves, Ruy Blas, has secretly fallen in love with the queen, the Don disguises Blas as a nobleman and takes him to court.
L’homme qui rit
371 editions published between 1800 and 2010 in 20 languages and held by 1,287 libraries worldwide
A man whose features were distorted into a permanent grin by order of King James II becomes a clown with a circus troupe where he meets and falls in love with a beautiful blind girl.
Disney’s the Hunchback of Notre Dame
60 editions published between 1923 and 2008 in 6 languages and held by 1,178 libraries worldwide
A retelling, based on the film, of how Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral in medieval Paris, saves the beautiful gypsy dancer Esmeralda from being unjustly executed.
The works of Victor Hugo
70 editions published between 1800 and 1958 in 3 languages and held by 1,057 libraries worldwide.
Les contemplations
284 editions published between 1853 and 2009 in 3 languages and held by 1,048 libraries worldwide.
La légende des siècles
249 editions published between 1857 and 2005 in 6 languages and held by 937 libraries worldwide.
The history of a crime
245 editions published between 1800 and 2009 in 5 languages and held by 913 libraries worldwide.
The last day of a condemned man
212 editions published between 1829 and 2009 in 22 languages and held by 906 libraries worldwide
Deeply shocking in its time, The Last Day of a Condemned Man is a profound and moving tale and a vital work of social commentary. A man vilified by society and condemned to death for his crime wakes every morning knowing that this day might be his last. With the hope for release his only comfort, he spends his hours recounting his life and the time before his imprisonment. But as the hours pass, he knows that he is powerless to change his fate. He must follow the path so many have trod before him–the path that leads to the guillotine.
William Shakespeare
134 editions published between 0001 and 2008 in 11 languages and held by 836 libraries worldwide.
Œuvres poétiques
70 editions published between 1890 and 2004 in 3 languages and held by 767 libraries worldwide
Things seen
181 editions published between 1800 and 2002 in 4 languages and held by 696 libraries worldwide
Notre-Dame de Paris, 1482
75 editions published between 1831 and 2008 in 5 languages and held by 690 libraries worldwide
Les châtiments
181 editions published between 1800 and 2000 in 3 languages and held by 677 libraries worldwide
Bug-Jargal
256 editions published between 1800 and 2008 in 16 languages and held by 656 libraries worldwide.
Oeuvres complètes de Victor Hugo
423 editions published between 1819 and 1980 in 4 languages and held by 310 libraries worldwide.
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