Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo, Isabel F. Hapgood (Translator)

Overview

Les Miserables is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. In the English-speaking world, the novel is usually referred to by its original French title.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9786057748737
Publisher:	E-Kitap Projesi & Cheapest Books
Publication date:	01/01/1900
Pages:	1200
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 2.44(d)

About the Author

Victor-Marie Hugo (1802 - 1885) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France. In France, Hugo's literary reputation rests on his poetic and dramatic output. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. In the English-speaking world his best-known works are often the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (sometimes translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though extremely conservative in his youth, Hugo moved to the political left as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time.
Other books of Author
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831)

Date of Birth:

February 26, 1802

Date of Death:

May 22, 1885

Place of Birth:

Besançon, France

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

Pension Cordier, Paris, 1815-18

Read an Excerpt

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilisation, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age--the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night--are not yet solved; as long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless. Hauteville House, 1862.


1815, M. Charles Franois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D----. He was a man of seventy-five, and had occupied the bishopric of D---- since 1806. Although it in no manner concerns, even in the remotest degree, what we have to relate, it may not be useless, were it only for the sake of exactness in all things, to notice here the reports and gossip which had arisen on his account from the time of his arrival in the diocese.

Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.

M. Myriel was the son of a counsellor of the Parlement of Aix; of the rank given to the legal profession. His father, intending him to inherit his place, had contracted a marriage for him at the early age of eighteen or twenty, according to a widespread custom among parliamentary families. Charles Myriel, notwithstanding this marriage, had, it was said, been an object of much attention. His person was admirably moulded; although of slight figure, he was elegant andgraceful; all the earlier part of his life had been devoted to the world and to its pleasures. The revolution came, events crowded upon each other; the parliamentary families, decimated, hunted, and pursued, were soon dispersed. M. Charles Myriel, on the first outbreak of the revolution, emigrated to Italy. His wife died there of a lung complaint with which she had been long threatened. They had no children. What followed in the fate of M. Myriel? The decay of the old French society, the fall of his own family, the tragic sights of '93, still more fearful, perhaps, to the exiles who beheld them from afar, magnified by fright--did these arouse in him ideas of renunciation and of solitude? Was he, in the midst of one of the reveries or emotions which then consumed his life, suddenly attacked by one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by smiting to the heart, the man whom public disasters could not shake, by aiming at life or fortune? No one could have answered; all that was known was that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.

In 1804, M. Myriel was cure of B----(Brignolles). He was then an old man, and lived in the deepest seclusion.

Near the time of the coronation, a trifling matter of business belonging to his curacy--what it was, is not now known precisely--took him to Paris.

Among other personages of authority he went to Cardinal Fesch on behalf of his parishioners.

One day, when the emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy cure, who was waiting in the ante-room, happened to be on the way of his Majesty. Napoleon noticing that the old man looked at him with a certain curiousness, turned around and said brusquely:

'Who is this goodman who looks at me?'

Table of Contents

About Author

Part 1. A Just Man

Part 2. The Fall

Part 3. In the Year 1817

Part 4. To Confide Is Sometimes to Deliver into a Person's Power

Part 5. The Descent

Part 6. Javert

Part 7. The Champmathieu Affair

Part 8. A Counter-Blow

Part 9. Waterloo

Part 10. The Ship Orion

Part 11. Accomplishment of the Promise Made to the Dead Woman

Part 12. The Gorbeau Hovel

Part 13. For a Black Hunt, A Mute Pack

Part 14. Le Petit-Picpus

Part 15. Parenthesis

Part 16. Cemeteries Take That Which Is Committed Them

Part 17. Paris Studied in its Atom

Part 18. The Great Bourgeois

Part 19. The Grandfather and the Grandson

Part 20. The Friends of the ABC

Part 21. The Excellence of Misfortune

Part 22. The Conjunction of Two Stars

Part 23. Patron Minette

Part 24. The Wicked Poor Man

Part 25. A Few Pages of History

Part 26. Eponine

Part 27. The House in the Rue Plumet

Part 28. Succor From Below May Turn Out to Be Succor From on High

Part 29. The End of Which Does Not Resemble the Beginning

Part 30. Little Gavroche

Part 31. Slang

Part 32. Enchantments and Desolations

Part 33. Whither Are They Going ?

Part 34. The 5th of June, 1832

Part 35. The Atom Fraternizes With the Hurricane

Part 36. Corinthe

Part 37. Marius Enters the Shadow

Part 38. The Grandeur of Despair

Part 39. The Rue de l'Homme Armé

Part 40. The War Between Four Walls

Part 41. The Intestine of the Leviathan

Part 42. Mud But the Soul

Part 43. Javert Derailed

Part 44. Grandson and Grandfather

What People are Saying About This

V. S. Pritchett

Hugo's genius was for the creation of simple and recognisable myth. The huge success of Les Miserables as a didactic work on behalf of the poor and oppressed is due to its poetic and myth-enlarged view of human nature... Hugo himself called this novel 'a religious work'; and it has indeed the necessary air of having been written by God in one of his more accessible and saleable moods.

Editorial Reviews

• "The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only."
• "To love another person is to see the face of God."
• "It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live."
• "Not being heard is no reason for silence."

― Hugo, Victor, Les Misérables

From the Publisher

Hugo's classic tale set against the backdrop of political upheaval in 19th-century France retains its timeless appeal in this notably condensed rendition of the struggles of former convict Jean Valjean. While the abridgment inevitably cuts many of the intricate subplots and minor characters who enrich Hugo's vast tome, this suspenseful central plot tracing Valjean's endeavor to emerge from desperate circumstances while being pursued by the duty-obsessed Inspector Javert remains intact and comprehensible to listeners. The principal characters retain their epic proportions, and the major themes of redemption through good works and the importance of authentic charity are undiminished. Narrator Michael York adds vigor and distinct characterizations to the broad cast of characters in this fittingly dramatic performance. Suitable for collections that do not already contain one of the many audio versions of this work (e.g., Audio Reviews, LJ 5/1/93).--Linda Bredengerd, Hanley Lib., Univ. of Pittsburgh, Bradford

Library Journal

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (40 pp.; Sept. 1997; 0-531- 30055-2): A storybook retelling of Hugo's classic of the lonely bellringer and his hopeless love for the beautiful gypsy girl, Esmerelda, whom he rescues from hanging and the evil archdeacon Dom Frollo and reunites with her mother. While remaining relatively faithful to the original, this version from Wynne- Jones (The Maestro, 1996, etc.) is always competent, but never compelling. Slavin creates lovely illustrations, but his pale washes leave even the most festive scenes sedate. The volume lacks power or emotion; adults seeking an alternative—any alternative—to the Disney film may find that this one hardly competes for the hearts and minds of the target audience.

Kirkus Reviews