Hugo's Les Miserables

Les Miserables is a novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1862 simultaneously in Brussels and Paris. In five parts and 365 chapters, it follows Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, who is shown mercy by a bishop and spends his life trying to become good while being hunted by the policeman Javert. Along the way it follows Fantine, a poor mother, her daughter Cosette, and the young Marius, and ends at the barricades of the June Rebellion of 1832 in Paris.¹²

Hugo began the story in the 1840s, but he wrote most of it in exile on the Channel Islands, after he had opposed Louis-Napoleon's coup of 1851. The novel looks back at the France that followed the French Revolution and Napoleon, and its famous chapters on Waterloo, the Paris sewers and convent life are digressions that build a panorama of society. Hugo wanted to expose how poverty, law and ignorance destroy people, writing in his preface that as long as these exist, such books will not be useless. The novel was a huge commercial success despite harsh reviews from some critics.¹²

It has been translated into many languages and adapted for stage and screen. The musical Les Miserables, first staged in Paris in 1980 and in London in 1985, became one of the longest-running shows in the world. Hugo's novel also pushed public debate on prisons and poverty in France.²