About this item
The Man Who LaughsBy Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood.The Man Who Laughs ("L'Homme qui Rit") was called by its author "A Romance of English History," and was written during the period Hugo spent in exile in Guernsey. Like The Toilers of the Sea, its immediate predecessor, the main theme of the story is human heroism, confronted with the superhuman tyranny of blind chance. As a passionate cry on behalf of the tortured and deformed, and the despised and oppressed of the world, The Man Who Laughs is irresistible. Of it Hugo himself says in the preface: "The true title of this book should be "Aristocracy'" - inasmuch as it was intended as an arraignment of the nobility for their vices, crimes, and selfishness.
About the Author
Victor Marie Hugo (/?hju??o?/; French: [vikt?? ma?i y?o]; 26 February 1802 - 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best-known French writers. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry and then from his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) . He also produced more than 4,000 drawings, which have since been admired for their beauty, and earned widespread respect as a campaigner for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment.Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed, and he became a passionate supporter of republicanism; his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon. His legacy has been honoured in many ways, including his portrait being placed on French franc banknotes.Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Étienne Carjat [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
