1802 Besancon
1885 Paris

Victor Hugo was born on February 26, 1802, in Besançon, France. Already at the age of fifteen, Hugo was honored by the Académie française for one of his poems, and at the age of nineteen, he published "Odes et poésies diverses" (1822), his first volume of poetry, with the novels "Han d’Islande" (1823) and "Bug-Jargal" (1824) as well as other poetry volumes following in short order. With the famous foreword to his historical drama "Cromwell" (1827), Hugo, as the spokesman for the Romantics, composed the most important manifesto of that school of poetics. He then put his thoughts on poetic truth set out in the "Préface de Cromwell" into effect in two more historical dramas, "Marion de Lorme" (1829) and "Hernani ou l’Honneur Castillan" (1830). At the premiere of "Hernani" on February 25, 1830 in the Comédie-Francaise, an argument erupted in the audience among conservative critics and the Romantic poets led by Théophile Gautier. This "Bataille d’Hernani" (Battle of Hernani) has since become part of French literary history. Hugo's novel "Notre-Dame de Paris" appeared in 1833, definitively establishing his reputation as a novelist. He was subsequently inducted into to the Académie française in 1841. After the failure of his drama "Les burggraves" in 1843, he turned more and more away from writing, participating in the political life of France. As a royalist, he was soon conferred noble status in 1845 by King Louis Philippe. After the Revolution of 1848, Hugo sat in Parliament as a Bonapartist representative and became a member of the national legislative assembly in 1849. After his participation in the unsuccessful coup d'état against President Louis Napoleon, the future emperor Napoleon III, Hugo had to flee France in 1851. His exile led him through Belgium to the canal island of Guernsey, where he completed his most extensive work - and most famous next to "Notre-Dame de Paris" - the five part novel "Les Misérables." Hugo returned to Paris in 1870, where he occupied several unimportant state offices until his death on May 22, 1885, in Paris.

Hugo, Victor

Hugo, Victor