Chapter I
Victor Hugo
1802 – 1885
Victor-Marie Hugo was born on February 26, 1802, in Besançon, France. His father, Joseph-Léopold Hugo, was a general in Napoleon's army — a man who rose from humble origins through courage and talent. His mother, Sophie Trébuchet, was a royalist from Brittany. The tension between his father's revolutionary ideals and his mother's royalism would define the political journey of Hugo's entire life.
Hugo's childhood was spent following his father's military postings across Europe: Italy, Corsica, Spain. The Mediterranean landscapes — the light over the sea, the hills of Andalusia — would appear decades later in his poetry. His father served in Napoleon's campaign in Spain, and the young Victor saw the violence of empire up close.
“A writer is a world trapped inside a person.”
— Victor Hugo
In his early career, Hugo rose to fame as a Romantic poet and playwright. His play Hernani, which premiered in 1830, caused a riot. The “Battle of Hernani” was the most famous literary brawl in history — Hugo's supporters, the young Romantics, clashed with the conservatives of the classical establishment in the theater itself. “Hernani” became the rallying cry for a generation of French artists who wanted to break every rule.
In 1831, Hugo published Notre-Dame de Paris— in English, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. The novel was an immediate sensation. It made him the most famous writer in France. The novel saved Notre-Dame cathedral itself from demolition; the public outrage it inspired led to a massive restoration campaign. Hugo was not yet thirty, and he was already one of the most influential voices in Europe.
Politics consumed Hugo's middle age. He was elected to the National Assembly in 1848. He opposed Louis-Napoléon's coup d'état in 1851 with such vehemence that he was forced into exile. He fled to Brussels, then to the Channel Islands — first Jersey, then Guernsey. He spent nineteen years in exile (1851–1870), refusing to return to France while a tyrant ruled. This period of exile was enormously productive: it was during these years on the Channel Islands that he wrote Les Misérables.
The Writing of Les Misérables
The First Draft
Hugo begins work on a novel called Les Misères — the original title. He sketches the story of a convict and a saintly bishop.
Interrupted by Revolution
The 1848 Revolution interrupts Hugo's work. He puts the manuscript aside and enters politics.
Resumed in Exile
From Hauteville House in Guernsey, Hugo returns to the manuscript. It has grown enormously in scope. What was once a story about a convict becomes a novel about France itself.
Publication
Les Misérables is published. Queues form outside bookstores in Paris. The first edition sells out within hours. Hugo's novel is a literary event — the most anticipated book of the century.
Hugo returned to France in 1870 after the fall of Napoleon III. His return was triumphant. When he died on May 22, 1885, over two million people lined the streets of Paris for his funeral — the largest public funeral in French history. He is buried in the Panthéon.
“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
— Les Misérables
Hugo was not just a writer — he was the conscience of France. He campaigned against the death penalty, against child labor, and for universal suffrage. His political convictions are inseparable from his literary output. To read Les Misérables is to encounter the moral universe of a man who believed that literature could — and should — change the world.