Person

Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo was a French writer, poet, and dramatist who gave Romanticism a monumental voice and turned literature into a theatre of passion, conscience, and social struggle. In The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables, he created Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Jean Valjean, and Javert in stories written with sweeping imagination, dramatic force, and profound compassion for the downtrodden. His vast body of work includes novels, poetry, plays, essays, political writings, and speeches that made him one of the defining figures of French culture. Although he was celebrated as a literary giant, Hugo also spent many years in exile because of his political convictions. In that exile, the famous author became something larger: a voice of conscience, convinced that words could carry the force of justice.