Victor Hugo

Writer, born in Besançon, NE France. Educated in Paris and Madrid, he wrote his first play at the age of 14, and went on to become the most prolific French writer of the 19th-c. His early works include Odes et Ballades (1822, 1826), and Hernani (1830), the first of the ‘five-act lyrics’ which compose his drama. The 1830s saw several plays, such as Marion Delorme (1831), books of poetry, notably Les Feuilles d'automne (1831, Autumn Leaves), and novels, of which the most popular is Notre Dame de Paris (1831, trans The Hunchback of Notre Dame). He was elected to the Legislative Assembly, and joined the democratic republicans; but in 1851, after the coup, he fled into exile in Brussels, and in 1852 moved to the Channel Is. There he wrote several major works, notably his books of poems Les Châtiments (1853, Punishments) and Les Contemplations (1856), and his panoramic novel of social history, Les Misérables (1862). He returned to Paris in 1870, was made a senator in 1876, and upon his death was given a national funeral.