The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Victor-Marie Hugo was born in Besançon, France, in 1802. A precocious writer, in 1827 he published his epic verse drama Cromwell, a political allegory whose preface might be regarded as a Romanticist manifesto. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame followed in 1831 and throughout the following decade he wrote a number of plays, stories and poetry collections. However, his literary output in the few years after 1843, when his daughter died in a drowning accident, was sparse. He began a new novel as an outlet for his grief, but would only complete it many years later as Les Misérables (1862). He died in 1885.