Les Misérables

victor hugo charles e. wilbour

Les Misérables is the great epic masterpiece of the mid-nineteenth century. Begun in 1845, the year Louis Philippe conferred a peerage and a lifetime seat in the Senate upon Victor Hugo, it was completed when the author was living in exile in the Channel Islands. Les Misérables is a product as well as a document of the political, social, and religious upheaval that followed the Napoleonic Wars and Europe's great democratic revolutions. The story is centered on Jean Valjean, a peasant who enters the novel a hardened criminal after nineteen years spent in prison for stealing a loaf of bread for the starving children of his sister. The path of Valjean's last twenty-five years, leading from the French provinces to the battlefield of Waterloo and the ramparts of Paris during the Uprising of 1832, introduces us to secret societies of revolutionaries and the vast world of the French lower classes. Jean Valjean's flight from the police agent Javert--the prototype of over a hundred years of fictional detectives--culminates in one of the most famous scenes in all literature, the chase through the sewers of Paris. Les Misérables sold out its large first printing in twenty-four hours and has remained enormously popular. This edition is the classic English translation of Hugo's friend Charles Wilbour, which appeared the same year the novel was published in France.

Genres classicsfictionhistorical fictionliteraturefrancehistoricalnovelsfrench literatureromanceclassic literature

1260 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31,1862

Literary awards

french-american foundation translation prize,

Places

paris, france, digne, montreuil,

This edition

Format: 1260 pages, Hardcover
Published: September 5, 1992 by Modern Library
ISBN: 9780679600121
ASIN: 0679600124
Language: English

Characters More characters

Jean Valjean

Jean Valjean is the protagonist of Les Miserables, a former convict who turns his life around after a kindly act from the bishop. He takes care of Fantine and becomes the father of her daughter Cosette. Throughout the story he is chased by Inspector Javer...
Javert

The antagonist of Les Miserables. He is an Inspector who searches tirelessly for Jean Valjean....
Cosette

Cosette is the daughter of Fantine and Tholomyes. She is raised by the Thénardiers who treat her like a servant. Jean Valjean rescues her and makes her his daughter. For several years she is raised in a convent, but then Valjean takes her and leaves. She ...
Fantine

After being abandoned by her lover, she is left with her daughter Cosette. She finds an innkeepers family who take care of Cosette and goes to find work. When they discover she has a daughter she is fired. Later Jean Valjean, who owned the factory w...
Bishop Myriel

...
M. U0026 Mme. Thénardier

...

About the author

victor hugo

After Napoleon III seized power in 1851, French writer Victor Marie Hugo went into exile and in 1870 returned to France; his novels include The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).

This poet, playwright, novelist, dramatist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, and perhaps the most influential, important exponent of the Romantic movement in France, campaigned for human rights. People in France regard him as one of greatest poets of that country and know him better abroad.