Les Misérables (Macmillan Collector's Library) - Hardcover

Hugo, Victor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1909621498 ISBN 13: 9781909621497

Publisher: Macmillan Collector's Library, 2016

Synopsis

A beautiful gift edition of the much-loved classic, now a major PBS television series starring Dominic West and Oscar winning actress, Olivia Coleman.

Les Misérables is a magnificent, sweeping story of revolution, love and the will to survive set amidst the poverty stricken streets of nineteeth-century Paris.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition has features an introduction by Paul Bailey.

Escaped convict Jean Valjean turns his back on his criminal past to build his fortunes as an honest man. He takes in abandoned orphan Cosette and raises her as his own daughter. But Jean Valjean is unable to free himself from his previous life and is pursued to the end by ruthless policeman Javert. As Cosette grows up, young idealist Marius catches a glimpse of her and falls desperately in love. The fates of all the characters await them during the violent turmoil of the June Rebellion in 1832.

This abridged version of Victor Hugo's masterpiece was published in 1915 with the aim to provide 'a unified story of the life and soul-struggles of Jean Valjean'.

About this title

About the Author

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is one of the most well-regarded French writers of the nineteenth century. He was a poet, novelist and dramatist, and he is best remembered in English as the author of Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).

Hugo was born in Besançon, and became a pivotal figure of the Romantic movement in France, involved in both literature and politics. He founded the literary magazine Conservateur Littéraire in 1819, aged just seventeen, and turned his hand to writing political verse and drama after Louis-Philippe's accession to the throne in 1830. His literary output was curtailed following the death of his daughter in 1843, but he began a new novel as an outlet for his grief. Completed many years later, this novel became Hugo's most notable work, Les Misérables.

Review

"Hugo's genius was for the creation of simple and recognizable myth. The huge success of "Les Miserables "as a didactic work on behalf of the poor and oppressed is due to his poetic and myth-enlarged view of human nature." V. S. Pritchett

"It was Tolstoy who vindicated [Hugo's] early ambition by judging "Les Miserables "one of the world's great novels, if not the greatest [His] ability to present the extremes of experience 'as they are' is, in the end, Hugo's great gift." From the Introduction by Peter Washington"

Edition details

• Publisher: Macmillan Collector's Library
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1909621498
• ISBN 13: 9781909621497
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 424