About+the+Author



Victor-Marie Hugo, born February 26th, 1802, was a great French poet, playwright, novelist, and activist. His works are reliable accounts on many of the greatest happenings in French history, merely because they occurred around the time of his life. Napoleon became France's emperor when Hugo was two, and the Bourbon Monarchy was restored before he turned eighteen.

Victor's mother was a Catholic zealot and a fanatical Royalist. His father was an atheist Republican and a high-ranking officer in Napoleon's army. Despite their opposing views, his parents got along well for awhile and the family consisted of Abel, Eugene, and Victor. Victor Hugo was the youngest of the three brothers. Because his father was in the army, Victor moved a lot and was able to see vast Alpine passes, snowy mountain peaks, the blue Mediterranean, and French countryside. Not everyone in the family enjoyed these vastly changing surroundings. Sophie Trebuchet divorced Joseph Hugo in 1803, and Hugo went with her to be educated and well-raised.

Victor fell in love with his childhood friend Adele Foucher and proposed, despite his mother's wishes. But out of loving respect, he didn't actually marry until 1822, a year after his mother passed away. He had four children, Leopoldine, Charles, Francois-Victor, and Adele, each two years apart. Leopoldine ddrowned in the Seine when she was 19 years old and a boat she was in overturned. Her husband died as well, trying to save her. Victor never recovered from this loss, and from then on many of his poems and stories reflected tragedy, grief, and death.

In 1829, Victor released //The Last Day of a Condemned Man. Claude Gueux// was published in 1834; a short realistic fiction story about a murderer who was executed in France. This was a precursor to his later novel on social injustice, //Les Miserables//. But his first full-length novel was //The Hunchback of Notre Dame,// 1831, an enormously successful work that may have surpassed //Les Mis// in notoriety. This book had a great effect on France, forcing the government to restore the Cathedral of Notre Dame and starting a restoration binge to many other pre-renaissance buildings. Finally, in 1862, the publishers Lacroix and Verboeckhoven launched arguably the greatest novel in French history, //Les Miserables//. Critics hated it. People loved it. The novel sold out in the first twenty-four hours and it was being analyzed ardently by the French National Assembly. By today, it has been adapted for cinema, television, radio, and theatre.

Victor has a record for the shortest correspondence in history, which occurred between him and his publisher in 1862. Victor was away from France when his best-seller was published. He sent a letter with the message '?', to which his publisher replied '!'.

He released more stuff, none of which matters all that much because nothing after //Les Mis// was anywhere near as revered. He also liked to doodle, and his drawings are considered the forefathers of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

Victor had a small political role, but it was cut short when Napoleon III seized power in 1851. Our author openly declared the new leader a traitor to France and went into a cheerful exile to Belgium, where he published many a anti-Napoleon pamphlet. During exile he influenced several leaders of countries to drop the death penalty and to free condemned prisoners.

When he returned to France in 1870, he was considered a hero. Sadly, he also suffered a stroke, the death of both sons, and his daughter's incarceration in an insane asylum. His wife had died two years before. Even with all these tragedies, on January 30th 1876 he was elected onto the French Senate. He didn't actually do much, and was more (to use Sarah Palin's favorite word) of a maverick.

Hugo died in 1885, at the ripe old age of 83. THe entire country of France mourned the loss of their great hero. Over two million people joined his funeral procession from the Arc de Triomphe to the Pantheon. His cryptmates in the Pantheon are Alexandre Dumas and Emile Zola. Victor wasn't just a writer. He was a national legend.