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During the next 15 years he produced six plays, four volumes of verse, and the romantic historical novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, establishing his reputation as the greatest writer in France. Madame Hugo became the mistress of her husband’s commanding of fi cer, General Lahorie, who was a father fi gure to Hugo and his brothers until the General’s execution in 1812. However, Victor’s mother decided not to subject her three sons to the dif fi culties of army life, and settled in Paris to raise them. His father, General Joseph Leopold Hugo, was the son of a carpenter who rose through the ranks of Napoleon’s citizen army. A great poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, pamphleteer, diarist, politician and moralist, Hugo was a man of immense passion and endless contradictions. VICTOR HUGO’S enormously successful career covered most of the nineteenth century and spanned both the Romantic and Realistic movements.

His play Hernani, whose premiere was interrupted by fi st- fi ghts between Hugo’s admirers and detractors, took a large step towards a more realistic theatre and made him a rich man. In 1830, Victor became one of the leaders of a group of Romantic rebels who were trying to loosen the hold of classical literature in France. In 1822, he married Adele Foucher, who became the mother of his children, Leopold-Victor, Charles- Victor, Francois-Victor, Adele, and Leopoldine. He lived in abject poverty for a year, but then won a pension of 1,000 francs a year from Louis XVIII. Throughout his lifetime, he played a major role in France’s political evolution from dictatorship to democracy.

Barely out of his teens, Hugo became a hero to the common people as well as a favourite of heads of state. He lived in abject poverty for a year, but then won a pension of 1,000 francs a year from Louis XVIII for his fi rst volume of verse. When his mother died in 1821, Victor refused to accept fi nancial help from his father. However, his mother discouraged the romance, believing that her son should marry into a fi ner family. As a teenager, he fell in love with a neighbour’s daughter, Adele Foucher. He won fi rst place in a national poetry contest when he was 17.

Background | 1 ABOUT VICTOR HUGO Victor was an excellent student who excelled in mathematics, physics, philosophy, French literature, Latin, and Greek.