1-158-885 - Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage-Images

Victor Hugo, French poet, dramatist and novelist, 1867. Born in Besancon, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a central figure in the French Romantic movement. In 1848, the year of revolutions in Europe, he was elected to the Assembly as a Republican but after Napoleon III's coup d'etat he was sent into exile, living in Guernsey in the Channel Islands until 1870. His work includes Notre Dame de Paris (1831), Les Miserables (1862), Les Travailleurs de la Mer (The Toilers of the Sea) (1866). Among his plays La Roi s'amuse (1832) was banned. In its guise as Verdi's opera Rigoletto it is universally popular. From La Lune (Paris, 19 May 1867).