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His Fame Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is one of the most important French romantic writers. His two most famous works are Les Miserables, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which have both been adapted to film several times.

His Life Victor Hugo was born in Besançon as the son of a army general, who taught young Victor to admire Napoleon as a hero. After the separation of his parents, he was raised and educated in Paris by his mother, where the family settled when Hugo was two. From 1815 to 1818 Hugo attended the Lycée Louis- le Grand in Paris. He began in early adolescence to write verse tragedies and poetry, and translated Virgil.

His Personal Life Hugo felt that the Romantic movement was calling him. Therefore, he lived his life as the ideal romantic. Men found him intolerable. Women loved him, and posed as goddesses before him. He had an official wife, Adele, and a mistress who he kept in a humiliatingly smaller house than his about 2.5 miles away.

His Personal Life (cont.) Hugo cheated on both of these women with actresses, maids, his barber’s wife, his son’s mistress, and anyone else vulnerable to a seductive recitation of rhymed couplets. Even when old, his family would need to watch the frisky 70-year-old Hugo to prevent him from going to street corners looking for women.

His Personal Life (cont.) Adele later cheated on Hugo with his best friend. His grief was so overwhelming, after reading his anguish, one wondered if he was able to forget or recover. He later met a woman named Juliette. She brought him back to reality, and he found love again in her.

His Later Life In his later life, Hugo became involved in politics as a supporter of the republican form of government. After three unsuccessful attempts, Hugo was elected in 1841 to the Académie Francaise. This triumph was shadowed by the death of Hugo's daughter Léopoldine in 1843. It was only after a decade that Hugo again published books. He devoted himself to politics, advocating social justice. After the 1848 revolution, with the formation of the Second Republic, Hugo was elected to the Constitutional Assembly and to the Legislative Assembly.

His Later Life (cont.) When the coup d'état by Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) took place in 1851, Hugo believed his life to be in danger. He fled to Brussels and then to Jersey and Guernsey in the English Channel. Hugo's partly voluntary exile lasted 20 years. During this time he wrote at Hauteville House some his best works, including Les Chatimets (1853) and Les Misérables (1862), an epic story about social injustice.

Death Hugo died in Paris on May 22, 1885. He was given a national funeral, attended by two million people, and buried in the Panthéon.