Victor Hugo Research Paper

Victor Marie Hugo, born in 1802 in Besançon, France is acknowledged as one of the most prominent Romantic authors of the nineteenth century (New World Encyclopedia contributors, 2014). His mother was royalist supporter, while his father a general in the army. For this reason, most of his early life was spent in different places. While studying law, he started to write plays and poems, replacing his interest in law with literature. At the age of 17, he also published a periodical on literature made mostly by his own essays. Despite the loss of his mother when he was 19, he married Adèle Foucher the following year and published at the same time his first book of poetry, Odes et Poésies Diverses. One year later, he published his first novel Hans of Iceland, which made him famous to the public. Only at this time, he was introduced to the literary community of the Romantic movement. In 1827, he published the romantic masterpiece Cromwell. In the following next two decades he published numerous plays, novels, and books of poetry, adding to the subjects he covered politics and society. With his induction to the French Academy in 1841 and the nomination to the Chamber of Peers (the superior house of French Parliament) in 1845, his involvement in social and political obligations was such that he practically stopped

In this perspective, his masterpiece Les Misérables takes an important role in the history of protest literature. Published in 1862, it was “one of the biggest operations in publishing history” (Robb, 1997): released simultaneously in Paris, London, Brussels, Leipzig, Rotterdam, Madrid, Milan, Turin, Naples, Warsaw, Pest, St. Petersburg, and Rio de Janeiro. The publisher paid Hugo one million francs for the novel—the largest advance in French letters, while in a few months Lacroix recovered his costs and eventually made millions of francs (Josephson,