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ABOUT VICTOR HUGO

VICTOR HUGO’S enormously
successful career covered most of
the nineteenth century and spanned
both the Romantic and Realistic
movements
...

Hugo was born on February 26,
1802
...

However, Victor’s mother decided
not to subject her three sons to the
difficulties of army life, and settled
in Paris to raise them
...


Victor was an excellent student who
excelled in mathematics, physics,
philosophy, French literature, Latin,
and Greek
...

As a teenager, he fell in love with
a neighbour’s daughter, Adele
Foucher
...
When his mother died
in 1821, Victor refused to accept
financial help from his father
...
Barely out of his
teens, Hugo became a hero to the
common people as well as a favourite
of heads of state
...


He lived in abject poverty
for a year, but then won
a pension of 1,000 francs a
year from Louis XVIII
...

In 1831, Adele Hugo became
romantically involved with a well
known critic and good friend of
Victor’s named Sainte-Beuve
...
Supported by a
small pension from Hugo, Drouet
became his unpaid secretary and
travelling companion for the next
fifty years
...
He
was joined in his increasing
interest in politics by a number of
other Romantic writers, marking
the beginning of the RealisticNaturalistic era in French literature
...

In 1830, Victor became one of the
leaders of a group of Romantic
rebels who were trying to loosen
the hold of classical literature in
France
...


Background | 1

ABOUT VICTOR HUGO
Hugo was a moderate republican
who was made a Peer of France in
1845
...

Three years later, when Louis
Napoleon abolished the Republic
and reestablished the Empire, Hugo
risked execution trying to rally the
workers of Paris against the new
Emperor
...

As a result, Hugo spent the next
decade in exile with his family
and Mme
...
During these
years, he wrote satires about Louis

Napoleon, returned to his poetry and
published several novels including
Les Misérables, which he had begun
years earlier
...

When Les Misérables was published
in Brussels in 1862, it was an
immediate popular success in spite
of negative reaction by critics, who
considered it overly sentimental, and
the government, who banned it
...
He remained there through
the siege of the city and contributed

portions of his royalties to purchase
weapons
...
Although he
was elected to the Senate in 1876,
poor health caused him to return to
Guernsey
...
Hugo died in 1868
and Mme
...

Hugo died in 1885 at the age of
eighty-three
...
Hugo’s death came
at the end of a century of war,
civil conflict, brutally repressed
insurrections such as the student
rebellion in Les Misérables, and
social injustice
...


Background | 2

ABOUT THE NOVEL
LES MISÉRABLES is a melodramatic
novel written from the premise
that any man can rise above his
circumstances to reach perfection
...

Hugo began to think about Les
Misérables as early as 1829
...
On
a sunny but cold day, he saw an
impoverished man being arrested
for stealing a loaf of bread
...
Inside there was a dazzlingly
beautiful woman dressed in velvet,
playing with a child hidden under
ribbons, embroidery and furs
...
Hugo wrote
that he saw this man as, “the spectre
of misery, the ghostly forewarning
in full light of day, in the sunshine,
of the revolution still plunged
in the shadows of darkness, but
emerging from them
...
”

When Les Misérables
was published in 1862, it
generated more excitement
than any book in the
history of publishing
...

He incorporated personal memories
of all kinds in the novel, often
mixing everyday trivial fact with
fiction to give the story a sense of
journalistic truth
...
“This is a leviathan I am
about to ship out to sea,” he said
before publishing
...
“All the reviews,”
wrote Hugo, “are reactionary and
more or less hostile
...

Bookshop owners and other vendors
literally battled to buy copies of the
book for their customers
...

This phenomenon was echoed in
1985, when the musical version of
Hugo’s novel opened in London
to mostly poor reviews
...


When Les Misérables was
published in 1862, it generated
more excitement than any book in
the history of publishing
...


Background | 3

ABOUT THE NOVEL
“I’m amazed you managed to get
through,” Mackintosh was told,
“the phones haven’t stopped
ringing
...


The book was a sensation
in America, whose own
civil unrest at the time
seemed to many to mirror
the events and feelings of
the novel
...
It
addresses England as well as Spain,
Italy as well as France, Germany as
well as Ireland, the republics that
harbour slaves as well as empires
that have serfs
...
” To further
his goal of presenting the ideas
of Les Misérables to as wide an
audience as possible, Hugo urged
his publishers to bring out cheaper
editions of the book in small print to
make it available to ordinary people
...
The book was a
sensation in America, whose own
civil unrest at the time seemed
to many to mirror the events and
feelings of the novel
...
”
As with any work of art pleading

for social change, the novel
Les Misérables acquired many
enemies
...

A theatrical version, written by
Hugo’s son Charles, was banned
in France, opening instead in
Brussels
...
”
Nonetheless, Les Misérables has
been translated into nearly every
language and, during the past
century, has become one of the bestselling books in history
...


The ‘Consulat
...


1773

1802

Birth of Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo,
Victor Hugo’s father
...


1789

Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo posted to
Elba in disgrace, remains there with
his three small sons (Eugene, the
youngest, is born in 1803) while
Sophie Hugo remains in Paris, and
is befriended by General Victor
Lahorie, her husband’s former
commanding officer
...
Sophie Hugo
finally rejoins her husband in Elba
briefly, but they quarrel constantly
...
Léopold hears of
his wife’s affair with Lahorie and
sues her for divorce
...


French Revolution begins
...


1792 - 95
The republican ‘Convention,’ ending
in Robespierre’s terror
...
The ‘Chouans’
(royalist Breton insurgents) begin
their full-scale civil war against
the republican French government
...


1795 - 1799
‘Le Directoire’, the first postrevolution government
...


1797
Marriage in Paris of Sophie Trébuchet
and Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo
...


1803

1804 - 1815
French Empire; rise and fall of the
Napoleonic Empire, ending with the
battle of Waterloo
...

Sophie and her three children return
to Paris, settling at 24 Rue de Chichy
...
19
...


1812
Lahorie is executed for plotting
Napoleon’s downfall
...
Sophie Hugo
sues him for maintenance
...
General
Léopold Hugo mistakenly hopes
that by rallying to Louis XVIII in
extremis he will be able to stay in
the army
...


1815 - 1824
Reign of Louis XVIII
...
Louis XVIII
sends him 500 francs
...
Léopold
Hugo marries his mistress, Catherine
Thomas
...
Léopold
Hugo follows the French King to
Spain and gets a lucrative staff
appointment
...

Birth of Victor Hugo’s first son,
Léopold Victor
...


Death of Léopoldine Hugo
...


1824

1845

1870

Birth of Victor Hugo’s first daughter,
Léopoldine
...


1825

1848 - 1851

Victor Hugo awarded the Légion
d’Honneur for services to literature
...
Napoleon
III flees France and settles in
England
...


1826
Birth of Victor Hugo’s second son,
Charles Victor
...
Birth of Victor Hugo’s third
son, Francois-Victor
...
Victor
Hugo leaves hastily for Brussels
...

Birth of second daughter Adéle
...


Louis Napoleon proclaims himself
Emperor as Napoleon III
...


1852 - 1870

Victor Hugo publishes Notre-Dame
de Paris
...
Hugo
vows not to set foot on French soil
till his removal
...


1871
April-May – Paris ‘Commune’
uprising, soon crushed, leads to
appalling carnage and repression
...
His Brussels home is stoned
and he is declared persona non grata
in Belgium, moving to Luxembourg,
returning briefly to Paris, then to
Guernsey to write Quatre-VingtTreize
...
Funeral
of General Lamque – hero to
workers and students – degenerates
into riots, and the barricades
described in Les Misérables
...


1836

1861

Death of Juliette Drouet
...


1885

1862

1885

Applies for membership of
Academie Française; fails
...


1841

1856
Publication of more poetry, Les
Contemplations
...


1875
Victor Hugo settles permanently in
Paris and is appointed Senator
...

1 June – State funeral attended by
over three million people
...


Background | 6

ABOUT EMILE BAYARD
EMILE BAYARD was Victor
Hugo’s favourite illustrator, famous
in his own lifetime for his brilliant
portraits of Fantine, Éponine,
Valjean and Javert, but best known
today by people all over the world
for “his” Cosette, used originally on
the sleeve of the French ‘Les Mis’
record in 1980, and now famous as
the Les Misérables logo
...


With infinite attention to detail,
Emile Bayard worked for months
on huge paintings, of which the
best known are “After the Battle
of Waterloo” and “Sedan 1870”
...

In the tradition of the time, he also
used his drawing skills to rework
original sketches by explorers
and travellers, sometimes even
transforming pictures of exotic
places into lithographs
...


Cosette
Emile Bayard
Quintessentially a wealthy Parisian
“society painter” with pupils and his
own atelier, Emile Bayard showed
a remarkable understanding of
Victor Hugo’s work as seen in his
illustrations of the cast of characters
in Les Misérables
...


1824 - 30

1910

The reign of Charles X
...


Victor Hugo starts writing Les
Misérables
...


1792
First French Republic declared
...


1793
Louis XVI executed
...
Victor Hugo describes
this conflict in his novel 93
...


1799 - 1804

Death of General Lamarque, a hero
to workers and students
...


1935
The first American sound version is
produced by Richard Boleslawski
...
He dissolves Parliament
and is given full powers for ten
years
...


1852
Louis Napoleon declares himself
Emperor
...


1985
Les Misérables opens at the
Barbican Theatre in London
...


1862
Victor Hugo publishes Les
Misérables, written in exile
...
Hugo returns to
France in triumph
...


1885

1804 - 15

Hugo dies
...


French Empire; the rise and fall of
Napoleon, ending with the battle of
Waterloo
...


1906
The first silent film of Les
Misérables is directed in France by
Albert Capellini

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