Victor Marie Hugo, French poet, novelist and
playwright, was born in Besançon on February 26, 1802.
Educated in Paris, he showed signs of his future as a writer
at a very early age. At the age of 15 he was honored by the
Académie Française for a poem and by the age
of 20 he had already written a tragedy.
He began writing poems and odes, novels and
also drama. The years that would turn out to be Hugo’s
most productive spanned from 1829-1843. Italian composer Giuseppe
Verdi adapted Hugo’s Hernani for his opera
Ernani and also The King Amuses Himself, for the
opera Rigoletto. One of Hugo’s greatest achievements,
the historical novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
set in 15th century France, earned him much acclaim and eventually
an election into the Académie Française.
Hugo began taking up active participation in
politics. Starting off as a Royalist, he was made peer of
France by King Louis Philippe, however by the time of the
Revolution in 1848, Hugo was a Republican. After the unsuccessful
revolt against President Louis Napoleon in 1851, Hugo fled
to Belgium and later began a 15-year-long exile, living on
Guernsey Island. While in exile, Hugo produced many literary
works, among which is his longest and perhaps most famous
works of all, Les Miserables, a novel depicting the
social injustice of 19th France. He returned to France in
1870 where he continued participating in politics, forming
part of the National Assembly and later the Senate.
A French writer who
contributed enormously to the literary Romantic Movement in
France, Hugo died at the age of 83 in Paris.
