Читать книгу Essential Novelists - Victor Hugo - Victor Hugo, August Nemo, John Dos Passos - Страница 3

Author

VICTOR-MARIE HUGO WAS born in Besançon, France, on February 26, 1802, to mother Sophie Trébuche and father Joseph-Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo. His father was a military officer who later served as a general under Napoleon.

Victor Hugo studied law between 1815 and 1818, though he never committed himself to legal practice. Encouraged by his mother, Hugo embarked on a career in literature. He founded the Conservateur Litteraire, a journal in which he published his own poetry and the work of his friends. His mother died in 1821. The same year, Hugo married Adèle Foucher and published his first book of poetry, Odes et poésies diverses. His first novel was published in 1823, followed by a number of plays.

Hugo's innovative brand of Romanticism developed over the first decade of his career.

In 1831, he published one of his most enduring works, Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Set in the medieval period, the novel presents a harsh criticism of the society that degrades and shuns the hunchback Quasimodo. This was Hugo's most celebrated work to date, and paved the way for his subsequent political writing.

Hugo fled to Brussels following a coup in 1851. He lived in Brussels and in Britain until his return to France in 1870. Much of the work that Hugo published during this period conveys biting sarcasm and fierce social criticism. Among these works is the novel Les Misérables, was finally published in 1862. The book was an immediate success in Europe and the United States. Later reinterpreted as a theatrical musical and a film, Les Misérables remains one of the best-known works of 19th century literature.

Hugo died in Paris on May 22, 1885. He received a hero's funeral. His body lay in state beneath the Arc de Triomphe before burial in the Panthéon. Hugo remains one of the giants of French literature. Although French audiences celebrate him primarily as a poet, he is better known as a novelist in English-speaking countries.