Victor Hugo
(1802–1885)
Undoubtedly, Victor Hugo was the greatest Romantic writer in nineteenth-century France. He was a legend, adored in his own time. Outside of France, Hugo became famous with his great "protest" novel Les Misérables, which the American public eagerly read in installments during the days of the Civil War. But in France, Hugo is most prominent as a lyricist.
He started writing as a teen. He wrote poetry and tragedies and translated Virgil. He and his brother started a magazine when Hugo was only sixteen, and he published his first book of poetry when he was twenty. By the time he was forty, he had become the most popular author in France.
Writing, however, was not Hugo's only interest; he was also concerned with politics. In his later life he was elected to public office. However, after the Revolution of 1849, he took the losing side in a political struggle over the new government and was forced to flee in 1851. During his exile he wrote many of his best poems and the novel
Les Misérables. Twenty years later, Hugo returned to France a national hero. When he died in 1885, two million people attended his funeral, and he was buried in the Panthéon.
