Victor Hugo was born in Besançon in 1802, the son of a general, and was publishing admired poetry before he turned twenty. His verse drama Hernani, staged in 1830, set off a celebrated theatre battle between the Romantics and the classicists, and he came out as the movement's leader. Politics changed his life: after opposing Louis-Napoleon's seizure of power he left France, living in Brussels, then Jersey, then Guernsey, and the exile lasted until 1870. He died in Paris in 1885 and was buried in the Panthéon.
Hugo wrote poetry, plays and novels, and the same concerns keep returning: what poverty and harsh law do to ordinary people, and what mercy can undo. The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829), a short novel, argues against the death penalty. In exile he turned his anger on Napoleon III in the pamphlet Napoléon le Petit and the poems of Les Châtiments. His big novels are expansive and digressive. The second part of Les Misérables opens with nineteen chapters on the battle of Waterloo.
Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, helped stir public interest in saving the cathedral, whose major restoration began in 1845. Les Misérables appeared in ten volumes in 1862, written across two long stretches, 1845 to 1848 and 1860 to 1862. A sung-through musical version premiered in Paris in 1980.
Start with Les Misérables, the book that brought you here. Let the detours run; they are part of how Hugo builds his case. If you want a shorter taste afterwards, try The Last Day of a Condemned Man, or Notre-Dame de Paris for his medieval Paris.
