Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo was a French Romantic-era poet, novelist, and dramatist whose novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862) are among the foundational works of 19th-century French literature. He was born Victor Marie Hugo on February 26, 1802, in Besançon, France, the third son of a Napoleonic general. He was educated at home and later in Paris, where his early literary talent attracted the attention of King Louis XVIII, who awarded him a royal pension at age 20.

His literary career spanned six decades. The early works that established his reputation included the 1831 historical novel Notre-Dame de Paris (translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) — set in 1482 medieval Paris and centered on the deformed bell-ringer Quasimodo, the Romani dancer Esmeralda, and the corrupted Archdeacon Frollo. The novel was instrumental in renewing late-19th-century European interest in Gothic architecture and led directly to the major restoration of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris in the 1840s.

His work was the Les Misérables (1862) — a massive five-volume novel set across post-Napoleonic France that follows the ex-convict Jean Valjean across two decades of pursuit by the relentless Inspector Javert, alongside the young workers' uprising of June 1832. The novel — over 1,500 pages, translated into nearly every world language, and the basis of the 1980 musical Les Misérables by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg — has been continuously among the most-read works of 19th-century European fiction.

Hugo's political career was as eventful as his literary one. He went into exile from 1851 to 1870 following his opposition to Napoleon III, living primarily in the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey. He returned to Paris in 1870 after Napoleon III's fall and spent the rest of his life as one of the most-revered figures of the French Third Republic. He died on May 22, 1885, at age 83. His funeral was attended by an estimated 2 million people in Paris — one of the largest single-event gatherings in 19th-century French history.

His name Victor is from the Latin victor meaning "winner" or "conqueror." Victor has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for over a century.