He has strangled his language in his tears.
Henry VIII, Act V, scene 1

Victor Marie Hugo, French poet, novelist, and dramatist, was born at Besancon in 1802 and died in Paris in 1885. He began to write poetry at the age of fourteen. His first romance—a real dime novel thriller—"Han d'Ilande" was published in 1823, and an English edition, with illustrations by George Cruikshank, appeared in 1825. "Bug Jargal," often used in colleges in second year French, was published in 1825, although it was written much earlier. "Notre Dame de Paris," in English translations generally called "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," appeared in 1831 and is generally considered his finest prose work. He was a socialist, and after his publication of "Napoleon Ie Petit" in 1852, and "Chatiments," in 1853, he was banished and lived for fifteen years in Jersey and Guernsey, but returned to France after the fall of the empire in 1870. "Les Travailleurs de la Mer" (Toilers of the Sea) was issued in 1866.

REFERENCES: A. C. Swinburne, A Study of Victor Hugo, 1886; M. Renouvier, Victor Hugo, le Poète, 1892.

Fireside Library. No. 14-15
Dime Library. No. 144