Les Miserables

Victor Hugo

62.00

Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience, when, owing to a case of mistaken identity, another man is arrested in his place; and by the relentless investigations of the dogged Inspector Javert. It is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty.

Norman Denny's lively English translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing Hugo's political and artistic aims in writing Les Misérables.

Victor Hugo (1802-85) wrote volumes of criticism, dramas, satirical verse and political journalism but is best remembered for his novels, especially Notre-Dame de Paris (also known as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) and Les Misérables, which was adapted into one of the most successful musicals of all time.

'All human life is here'
Cameron Mackintosh, producer of the musical Les Misérables

'One of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world'
Upton Sinclair

'A great writer - inventive, witty, sly, innovatory'
A. S. Byatt, author of Possession

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Victor Hugo

The French author Victor Marie, Vicomte Hugo (1802-1885), was the supreme poet of French romanticism. He is noted for the breadth of his creation, the versatility that made him as much at ease in the novel as in the short lyric, and the mystical grandeur of his vision.

Hugo's work may be roughly divided into three periods. First in time is the intimate lyrical vein typical of the odes. Second is an involved or committed poetry speaking directly to political and social conditions. The epic novel Les Misérables, for example, fits into this group. (But this vein is also present in the very first volume, where a number of poems praise the throne and the altar; Hugo, who was to end as a staunch republican, began as a royalist.) In the last phase of his career Hugo rose to the heights of mysticism and poetic vision, as in La Fin de Satan.