Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
France

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Victor Marie Hugo not only was a novelist, a poet, and a skilled dramatist but also he was one of the leading exponents of Romanticism. As the most important French wrter of his period, Hugo's work often involved politics, although he was surely best known as a novelist and a dramatist. After the age of 10, a period in which Hugo traveled with his father, the writer settled in Paris with his mother. He later shared his house as a meeting point with the prominent Romantic writers of the 19th century: Sainte-Beuve, Alfred de Vigny and others inspired undoubtfully Hugo's Cromwell (1827). Starting from 1826, year of publication of Odes and Ballads, Hugo published essays, volumes of poems, three novels, and a lot of dramatic works. In 1841 he joined the Acadèmie Francaise. This prolific period ended in 1843, year in which his daughter Leopoldine died. Since that year he decided to dedicate most of the time on political issues, and he took part in the constitutional government, becoming in 1848 a representative of the people, turning his beliefs from conservative into republican. Hugo's was exiled by Napoleon Bonaparte il 1851. Hugo's first marriage (Adèle Foucher) ended at the beginning of the 1830s, then he began a relashionship with Jouliette Drouet, who accompanied him in exile. While exiled, Hugo created his major writing works: he produced the first volume of his epic poem Legend of the Centuries (1859-83), Les Miserables and Contemplations (his best collections of poems, 1856). After 19 years, As the Second Empire was proclamed (1870) he came back to Paris and he was elected a senator of the Third Republic, acclaimed as a national hero. Although the last 20 years of his life were consumed by the death of his dearest, he went on writing and taking part in the political life of the state. His death occurred in 1885, and he received a state funeral.

Criticism

His two major novels, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831; trans. as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1833) and Les Misérables (1862; Eng. trans., 1862), demostrate how Hugo's works have survived critical indifference and remain, thanks to the richness of his style, among the most important writings of the 19th century. Cromwell (1827) was seen by the academics as the manifesto of romantic literary theory. In it, Hugo explained how to evade the formal constraints of classicism in order to show the truth in the human nature. In Hernani (1830) Hugo's romantic theory is strongly remarked and exemplified. Hugo almost always provided worthy historical settings to his novels. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a sad story of medieval Paris that talks about a deformed bell ringer's love to a wild gypsy girl. And Les Misérables focus on Jean Valjean, a victim of social injustice, but offers a multitude of details and events that build a full view of post-Napoleonic France and the beginning of the 19th century.

Works
Dramatic
Cromwell (1827)
Le Roi s’amuse (1832)
Marion Delorme (1831, tr. 1872)
Ruy Blas (1838, tr. 1850)
Les Burgraves (1843) <<-- marked the end of the Romantic Era in Europe
Poetry
Les Orientales (1829)
Feuilles d’automne (1831)
Les Chants du crépuscule (1835)
Les Voix intérieures (1837)
Les Rayons et les ombres (1840)
Les Châtiments (1853)
Les Contemplations (1856)
La Légende des siècles (1859)
Prose
Notre Dame de Paris (1831, tr. 1833)
Les Misérables (1862, tr. 1862)
Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866, tr. Toilers of the Sea, 1866)
Quatre-vingt-treize (1874, tr. Ninety-three, 1874).

Additional Information
Hugo @ Poets.com poetes.com/hugo