Synopses & Reviews
In time for the 150th anniversary of Les Misérables and a star-studded film adaptation, a stunning edition of Victor Hugo's masterpiece Victor Hugo's timeless story of injustice, heroism, and love in nineteenth-century Paris comes to Penguin Classics in an eye-catching new hardcover edition with cover art by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Wildly popular since its first publication in 1862,
Les Misérables comes to theaters this December in a new film adaptation with a stellar cast that includes Hugh Jackman as the intrepid Jean Valjean and Russell Crowe as the relentless policeman Javert. Penguin Classics' beautiful edition makes a wonderful gift for longtime fans of the Broadway musical and introduces a new generation of readers to one of the most important novels ever written.
This gorgeous hardcover edition features the widely celebrated and eminently readable translation by Norman Denny.
Synopsis
More commonly known as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo's Romantic novel of dark passions and unrequited love
In the vaulted Gothic towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral lives Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer. Mocked and shunned for his appearance, he is pitied only by Esmerelda, a beautiful gypsy dancer to whom he becomes completely devoted. Esmerelda, however, has also attracted the attention of the sinister archdeacon Claude Frollo, and when she rejects his lecherous approaches, Frollo hatches a plot to destroy her, that only Quasimodo can prevent. Victor Hugo's sensational, evocative novel brings life to the medieval Paris he loved, and mourns its passing in one of the greatest historical romances of the nineteenth century.
John Sturrock's clear, contemporary translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing it as a passionate novel of ideas, written in defence of Gothic architecture and of a burgeoning democracy, and demonstrating that an ugly exterior can conceal moral beauty. This revised edition also includes further reading and a chronology of Hugo's life.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Synopsis
More commonly known as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo's Romantic novel of dark passions and unrequited love, Notre-Dame de Paris, is translated with an introduction by John Sturrock in Penguin Classics.
In the vaulted Gothic towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral lives Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer. Mocked and shunned for his appearance, he is pitied only by Esmerelda, a beautiful gypsy dancer to whom he becomes completely devoted. Esmerelda, however, has also attracted the attention of the sinister archdeacon Claude Frollo, and when she rejects his lecherous approaches, Frollo hatches a plot to destroy her, that only Quasimodo can prevent. Victor Hugo's sensational, evocative novel brings life to the medieval Paris he loved, and mourns its passing in one of the greatest historical romances of the nineteenth century.
John Sturrock's clear, contemporary translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing it as a passionate novel of ideas, written in defence of Gothic architecture and of a burgeoning democracy, and demonstrating that an ugly exterior can conceal moral beauty. This revised edition also includes further reading and a chronology of Hugo's life.
Victor Hugo (1802-85) was a forceful and prolific writer. He wrote volumes of criticism, Romantic costume dramas, lyrical and satirical verse and political journalism but is best remembered for his novels, especially Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Miserables (1862) which was adapted into one of the most successful musicals of all time. Though exiled to the Channel Islands by Napoleon III, Hugo returned to Paris in 1870 and remained a great public figure until his death: his body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe, and he was later buried in the Panth on.
If you enjoyed Notre-Dame de Paris, you might like Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.
'A great writer - inventive, witty, sly, innovatory'
A. S. Byatt, author of Possession
Synopsis
In time for the 150th anniversary of Les Misérables and a star-studded film adaptation, a stunning edition of Victor Hugo's masterpiece Victor Hugo's timeless story of injustice, heroism, and love in nineteenth-century Paris comes to Penguin Classics in an eye-catching new hardcover edition with cover art by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Wildly popular since its first publication in 1862,
Les Misérables comes to theaters this December in a new film adaptation with a stellar cast that includes Hugh Jackman as the intrepid Jean Valjean and Russell Crowe as the relentless policeman Javert. Penguin Classics' beautiful edition makes a wonderful gift for longtime fans of the Broadway musical and introduces a new generation of readers to one of the most important novels ever written.
This gorgeous hardcover edition features the widely celebrated and eminently readable translation by Norman Denny.
About the Author
Born in 1802, the son of a high officer in Napoleon’s army,
Victor Hugo spent his childhood against a background of military life in Elba, Corsica, Naples, and Madrid. After the Napoleonic defeat, the Hugo family settled in straitened circumstances in Paris, where, at the age of fifteen, Victor Hugo commenced his literary career with a poem submitted to a contest sponsored by the Académie Française. Twenty-four years later, Hugo was elected to the Académie, having helped revolutionize French literature with his poems, plays, and novels. Entering politics, he won a seat in the National Assembly in 1848; but in 1851, he was forced to flee the country because of his opposition to Louis Napoleon. In exile on the Isle of Guernsey, he became a symbol of French resistance to tyranny; upon his return to Paris after the Revolution of 1870, he was greeted as a national hero. He continued to serve in public life and to write with unabated vigor until his death in 1885. He was buried in the Pantheon with every honor the French nation could bestow.
John Sturrock is a writer and critic who has previously translated Victor Hugo, Stendhal, and Rimbaud. A consulting editor at the London Review of Books, he lives in West Sussex, England.
John Sturrock is a writer and critic who has previously translated Victor Hugo, Stendhal, and Rimbaud. A consulting editor at the London Review of Books, he lives in West Sussex, England.