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4 Like many young writers of his generation, Hugo was profoundly influenced by Franois-Ren de Chateaubriand, the famous figure in the literary movement of Romanticism and France’s preminent literary figure during the early 1800s. Like Chateaubriand, Hugo would further the cause of Romanticism, become involved in politics as a champion of Republicanism, and be forced into exile due to his political stances. The precocious passion and eloquence of Hugo's early work brought success and fame at an early age
1Victor Hugo was a novelist, poet, dramatist, and one of the most important of French Romantic writers. Victor Hugo was the third and last son of Joseph Lopold Sigisbert Hugo and Sophie Trbuchet. His brothers were Abel Joseph Hugo and Eugne Hugo.
2 He was born in 1802 in Besanon (in the region of Franche-Comt) and lived in France for the majority of his life. However, he was forced into exile during the reign of Napoleon III — he lived briefsly in Brussels during 1851; in Jersey from 1852 to 1855; and in Guernsey from 1855 to 1870 and again in 1872-1873.
3 Hugo's father was a high-ranking officer in Napolon's army, an atheist republican who considered Napolon a hero. His mother was a staunch Catholic Royalist who is believed to have taken General Victor Lahorie as her lover, who was executed in 1812 for plotting against Napolon. Since Hugo's father, Joseph, was an officer, they moved frequently and Hugo learned much from these travels. On his family's journey to Naples, he saw the vast Alpine passes and the snowy peaks, the magnificently blue Mediterranean, and Rome during its festivities. Though he was only nearly six at the time, he remembered the half-year-long trip vividly. They stayed in Naples for a few months and then headed back to Paris.
5 His first collection of poetry (Odes et posies diverses) was published in 1822, when Hugo was only twenty years old, and earned him a royal pension from Louis XVIII.
6Young Victor fell in love and against his mother's wishes and became secretly engaged to his childhood friend Adle Foucher. Unusually close to his mother, it was only after her death in 1821 that he felt free to marry Adele (in 1822).
7 Hugo published his first novel the following year (Han d'Islande, 1823), and his second three years later (Bug-Jargal, 1826). Between 1829 and 1840 he would publish five more volumes of poetry (Les Orientales, 1829; Les Feuilles d'automne, 1831; Les Chants du crpuscule, 1835; Les Voix intrieures, 1837; and Les Rayons et les ombres, 1840), cementing his reputation as one of the greatest elegiac and lyric poets of his time.
8 Victor Published Les Misrables in 1862. The critical establishment was generally hostile to the novel. Nonetheless, Les Misrables proved popular enough with the masses that the issues it highlighted were soon on the agenda of the French National Assembly. Today the novel remains popular worldwide, adapted for cinema, television and musical stage to an extent equaled by few other works of literature.
Victor Hugo
