Although best known as the author of Notre Dame de Paris and Les Misérables, Victor Hugo was primarily a poet—one of the most important and prolific in French history. Despite his renown, however, there are few comprehensive collections of his verse available and even fewer translated editions. Translators E. H. and A. M. Blackmore have collected Victor Hugo's essential verse into a single, bilingual volume that showcases all the facets of Hugo's oeuvre, including intimate love poems, satires against the political establishment, serene meditations, religious verse, and narrative poems illustrating his mastery of the art of storytelling and his abiding concern for the social issues of his time. More than half of this volume's eight thousand lines of verse appear here for the first time in English, providing readers with a new perspective on each of the fascinating periods of Hugo's career and aspects of his style. Introductions to each section guide the reader through the stages of Hugo's writing, while notes on individual poems provide information not found in even the most detailed French-language editions. Illustrated with Hugo's own paintings and drawings, this lucid translation—available on the eve of Hugo's bicentenary—pays homage to this towering figure of nineteenth-century literature by capturing the energy of his poetry, the drama and satirical force of his language, and the visionary beauty of his writing as a whole.

Victor Hugo was the most important writer of the nineteenth century in France: leader of the Romantic movement, Revolutionary playwright, poet, epic novelist, author of the last universally accessible masterpieces in the European tradition, among them Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He was also a radical political thinker and eventual exile from France, a gifted painter and architect, and a visionary who conversed with Virgil, Shakespeare, and Jesus Christ – in short, a tantalizing personality who dominated and maddened his contemporaries. Graham Robb has written an extraordinary biography that does full justice to the drama of his subject’s life – a life that Robb calls ‘the most lucid case of madness in literature’. By grasping the giant in his entirety and in his many disguises, Robb, bestselling author of The Discovery of France, rewards us with a panorama of French and European society from the Revolution to the dawn of the twentieth century. Victor Hugo won the Whitbread Award for Biography and the Royal Society of Literature award.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.

Sunday, 8.30 p.m. (1833). Before beginning to copy or count words,[59] I must write you one line of love, my dear little lunatic. I love you—do you understand, I love you! This is a profession of faith which comprises all my duty and integrity. I love you, ergo, I am faithful to you, I see only you, think only of you, speak only to you, touch only you, breathe you, desire you, dream of you; in a word, I love you! that means everything. Do not therefore give way any more to melancholy; permit yourself to be loved and to be happy. Fear nothing from me, never doubt me, and we shall be blissful beyond words. I am expecting you shortly, and am ready with warm and tender caresses which, I hope, will cheer you. Your Juju. (1833). Since you left me I carry death in my heart. If you go to the ball to-night, it must be at the cost of a definite rupture between us. The pain I suffer at imagining you moving among that throng of fascinating, careless women, is too great for you to be able to inflict it without incurring guilt towards me. Write to me “Care of Madame K....” If I do not hear from you before midnight, I shall understand that you care very little for me ... that all is over between us ... and for ever. J. Wednesday, 2.30 p.m. (1833). I cannot refrain, dearly beloved, from commenting upon the profound melancholy you were in this morning, and upon the doubt you manifest on every occasion as to the sincerity of my love. This unjustifiable suspicion on your part disheartens me beyond all expression. It intimidates me and makes me fear to confide to you the incidents my dubious position exposes me to. To-day, for instance, I concealed from you the visit of a creditor, who presented himself to the porter, but was not shown up. I paid him out of my own resources, without your knowledge, because you are always telling me I do not love you. This expression from you makes me feel that you hold a shameful opinion of me and my character, rendered possible perhaps by my situation, but none the less false, unjust, and cruel. I love you because I love you, because it would be impossible for me not to love you. I love you without question, without calculation, without reason good or bad, faithfully, with all my heart and soul, and every faculty. Believe it, for it is true. If you cannot believe, I being at your side, I will make a drastic effort to force you to do so. I shall have the mournful satisfaction of sacrificing myself utterly to a distrust as absurd as it is unfounded. Meanwhile, I ask your pardon for the guilty thought that came to me this morning, and which may possibly recur, if you continue to see in my love only a mean-spirited compliance and an unworthy speculation. This letter is very lengthy, and very sad to write. I trust with all my soul, that I may never have to reiterate its sentiments. I love you. Indeed I love you. Believe in me. Juliette. Wednesday, 8.15 p.m. (1833).

First English translation of Victor Hugo’s writings on his experiments in spiritualism • Reveals Hugo’s conversations with renowned discarnate entities such as Shakespeare, Plato, Galileo, and Jesus • Examines his contacts with aliens from the planets Mercury and Jupiter and the revelation that our entire universe is a quantum hologram • Discusses Hugo’s possible role as a grand master of the Priory of Sion During Victor Hugo’s exile on the Isle of Jersey, where he and his family and friends escaped the reign of Napoléon III, he conducted “table-tapping” séances, transcribing hundreds of channeled conversations with entities from the beyond. Among his discarnate visitors were Shakespeare, Plato, Hannibal, Rousseau, Galileo, Sir Walter Scott, and Jesus. According to the transcripts, Jesus, during his three visits, condemns Druidism, faults Christianity, and suggests a new religion with Hugo as its prophet. To the skeptic, some of the “conversations” may seem self-serving--at best, the subconscious wishes of the naïve participants. But author John Chambers places Hugo’s experiments firmly in the tradition of visionary literature and psychic exploration, aligning those experiences with the poetry of William Blake, the table-tapping experiences of the Fox sisters, and the channeled writings of the great modern-day Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill, whose spirits’ utterances uncannily resemble those of Hugo’s. Hugo’s transcriptions are the missing link between the early nineteenth century’s fascination with the kabbalistic Zohar, reincarnation, and the writings of the Illuminati and the rise of spiritualism and the societies for the study of psychic phenomena in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This meticulously edited collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Introduction: Victor Hugo: His Life and Work Novels & Novellas: Les Misérables The Hunchback of Notre-Dame The Man Who Laughs Toilers of the Sea Hans of Iceland Bug-Jargal The Last Day of a Condemned Man; or, A Criminal's Last Hours Ninety-Three Claude Gueux (A Crime Story) A Fight with a Cannon Plays: Cromwell Hernani Marion De Lorme The King Amuses Himself Mary Tudor Esmeralda Ruy Blas Poetry: The Legend of the Alps "My Daughter, Hence and Pray! See, Night is Stealing o'er us" The Tomb and the Rose Miscellaneous Poems Essays & Speeches: Medley of Philosophy and Literature Napoleon the Little William Shakespeare The History of a Crime "In Defense of His Son" Address to the Workman's Congress at Marseille Oration on Voltaire Memoirs & Letters: The Memoirs of Victor Hugo Juliette Drouet's Love- Letters to Victor Hugo Letter to the London News Regarding John Brown Letter to Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman on American Slavery

This study places the last three novels of Victor Hugo's maturity - Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866), L'Homme qui rit (1869), and Quatrevingt-Treize (1874) - within the context of his artistic development after the success of Les Misérables (1862). By situating these historical narratives in relation to each other, to all of Hugo's previous fiction, and to a number of poetic and critical works published in exile and in the initial years of the Third Republic, it illuminates the final structural and thematic shifts from a poetics of harmony to one of transcendence. As in Les Misérables, the disharmony associated with social tumult, apocalyptic vision, and oxymoronic tensions provides an essential component of the later Hugo's Romantic sublime. Instead of merely capitalizing on the runaway success of Les Misérables by recycling its prominent features, however, each novel makes an original contribution to the political and aesthetic trajectory inscribed by the entire oeuvre. Each testifies as well to the wizardry of Hugo's own 'special effects' that contribute to his story-telling genius. Such effects, especially the dizzying spatial optics and manipulation of temporal dimensions, function not as mere playful gimmicks or novelistic flourishes but as strategies for figuring and communicating the ideal, both political and artistic. The unique interplay of poetic and historical discourse in each text reconfigures our disordered experience of the world into something far more coherent: a construction of meaning that strives to change perceptions and to promote social action.

While Victor Hugo's lasting appeal as a novelist can in large part be attributed to the unforgettable characters that he created, character has been paradoxically the most criticized and least understood element of his fiction. Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo provides readers with a deeper understanding of the complexities and nuances that characterize both Hugo's novel writing and the nineteenth-century French novel, and will thus appeal to the specialist and non-specialist alike.

Work 1: Experience the poetic brilliance of “Poems by Victor Hugo.” Hugo's collection of poems showcases his mastery of language and emotion. From romantic verses to poignant reflections on societal issues, Hugo's poetry captures the breadth of his literary prowess and his ability to evoke profound emotions. Work 2: Immerse yourself in the historical drama of “Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo.” Hugo's novel unfolds against the backdrop of the French Revolution, portraying the complexities of human nature and the moral dilemmas faced by its characters. The narrative is a gripping exploration of duty, sacrifice, and the pursuit of justice in times of upheaval. Work 3: Enter the world of social injustice and redemption with “Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.” Hugo's epic novel follows the lives of characters such as Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert in a sweeping narrative that spans decades. Filled with themes of love, justice, and the struggle for a better society, this masterpiece remains a timeless exploration of the human condition.