Marva A. Barnett

An expert on Victor Hugo and University of Virginia Professor Emeritus, Marva Barnett has been named a Chevalier des Palmes académiques in recognition of her contributions to Hugo studies. She is excited to be publishing soon with Swan Isle Press "To Love Is to Act: Les Misérables and Victor Hugo's Vision for Leading Lives of Conscience." Her bilingual anthology, "Victor Hugo on Things That Matter: A Reader," appeared with Yale University Press in 2010. In 2012, she published in France a co-edited volume of 101 letters to Hugo from his lover and muse, Juliette Drouet.

Marva loves speaking about Hugo in the U.S. and France and is proud that she was invited as the only non-French Hugo specialist at the 2017 Paris colloquium on Juliette Drouet and as the North American representative at the 2019 international colloquium "Victor Hugo, Visionary for Peace" in Havana. At the University Virginia (UVA), Marva has taught Hugo’s “Les Misérables” to hundreds of undergraduates, and in January 2019 she taught "Victor Hugo's Paris" in Paris.

She delighted in hosting "Les Mis" creators Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg as artists-in-residence at UVA in 2014 and again in 2017. It was also a thrill to talk with them and with actor Hugh Jackman, director Tom Hooper, singer/actor Colm Wilkinson, and producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh for her study of "Les Misérables" in "To Love Is to Act."

As a Contributor at The HuffPost, Marva has regularly shared her thoughts on the contemporary relevance of Victor Hugo's ideas and connects with her readers through her website: http://www.marvabarnett.com/.