San Antonio College Library

This biography of the nineteenth-century author describes his work as a novelist, dramatist, and poet, as well as his complex, often tragic personal life and his involvement in the political and cultural movements of his time.

The life of Victor Hugo, one of the giants of French literature, is a study in contrasts. This program chronicles how a man born into humble circumstances became a staunch monarchist and then a political liberal and supporter of the French republic. Though he lived many years in exile, Hugo was considered the conscience of the Republic, and his fame as a political force rivaled his renown as the author of plays, prose, and poetry. As a writer, he...

One of the most renowned figures in French literature, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is also the most widely read French novelist in the English-speaking world, owing to the continuing popularity of his two most important novels, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Miserables (1862). Despite this prestige, however, Hugo has often been unfairly maligned by some academic critics who have demeaned his accomplishments as both a poet and novelist by calling him...