Les Miserables [Christmas Summary Classics]

VICTOR HUGO
Victor Marie Hugo, the great French poet, dramatist, and novelist, was born at Besançon, on February 26, 1802. He wrote verses from boyhood, and after minor successes, achieved reputation with "Odes et Poésies," 1823. Hugo early became the protagonist of the romantic movement in French literature. In 1841 he was elected to the Academy. From 1845 he took an increasingly active part in politics, with the result that from 1852 to 1870 he lived in exile, first in Jersey and then in Guernsey. "Les Misérables" is not only the greatest of all Victor Hugo's productions, but is in many respects the greatest work of fiction ever conceived. An enormous range of matter is pressed into its pages--by turn historical, philosophical, lyrical, humanitarian--but running through all the change of scene is the tragedy and comedy of life at its darkest and its brightest, and of human passions at their worst and at their best. It is more than a novel. It is a magnificent plea for the outcasts of society, for those who are crushed by the mighty edifice of social order. Yet throughout it all there is the insistent note of the final triumph of goodness in the heart of man. The story appeared in 1862, when Hugo was sixty years old, and was written during his exile in Guernsey. It was translated before publication into nine languages, and published simultaneously in eight of the principal cities of the world. Hugo died on May 22, 1885. (See also Vol. XVII.)