Hugo, Victor (1802-1885)

A French novelist, poet and playwright. He is considered as the most important Romantic novelist in the French language. His body of work is very diverse: novels, lyric poetry, plays in verse and in prose, political discourses and a vast correspondence.

Victor Hugo is the author of the celebrated Misérables (1862), Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) or the theatre play Cromwell (1827). He was accepted into the Academy of France in 1841 and was forced into exile in 1852 following Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s coup d’etat on 2nd December 1852. On his return to France in 1870 he remained until his death a benchmark within the 3rd Republic, but above all a benchmark within literature.