About the Author

Victor Hugo (1802-85), novelist, poet, playwright, and French national icon, is best known for two of today's most popular world classics- Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, as well as other works, including The Toilers of the Sea and The Man Who Laughs. Hugo was elected to the Academie Fran aise in 1841. As a statesman, he was named a Peer of France in 1845. He served in France's National Assemblies in the Second Republic formed after the 1848 revolution, and in 1851 went into self-imposed exile upon the ascendance of Napoleon III, who restored France's government to authoritarian rule. Hugo returned to France in 1870 after the proclamation of the Third Republic. Date- 2013-08-06 Victor Hugo (1802-1885), novelist, poet, and dramatist, is one of the most important of French Romantic writers. Among his best-known works are The Hunchback of Notre Dame(1831) and Les Miserables(1862). INTRODUCER BIOGRAPHY- Jean-Marc Hovasse is Director of Research at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in Paris. One of France's leading specialists in 19th-century French literature, he is writing a monumental biography of Victor Hugo of which the first two volumes were published in 2001 and 2008. Victor Hugo (1802 - 85) was the most forceful, prolific and versatile of French ni