Les Miserables

LES MISÉRABLES

VICTOR HUGO (1802–85) was the most forceful, prolific and versatile of French nineteenth-century writers. He wrote Romantic costume dramas, many volumes of lyrical and satirical verse, political and other journalism, criticism and several novels, the best known of which are Les Misérables (1862) and the youthful Notre Dame de Paris (1831). A royalist and conservative as a young man, Hugo later became a committed social democrat and during the Second Empire of Napoleon III was exiled from France, living in the Channel Islands. He returned to Paris in 1870 and remained a great public figure until his death: his body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe before being buried in the Panthéon.

NORMAN DENNY was educated at Radley College, and in Vienna and Paris. He has written a great many short stories under different names and several novels. Among his many translations are Prometheus: A Life of Balzac by André Maurois, My Life and Films by Jean Renoir and The Future of Man, by Teilhard de Chardin.

Victor Hugo

LES MISÉRABLES

TRANSLATED AND WITH
AN INTRODUCTION BY
NORMAN DENNY

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First published 1862

This translation first published by the Folio Press 1976

Published in Penguin Books in two volumes 1980

Reprinted in one-volume edition 1982

The footnotes by Professor Marius-François Guyard are used by kind permission of Éditions Garnier Frères

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

III. IN THE YEAR 1817

IV. TO TRUST IS SOMETIMES TO SURRENDER

V. DEGRADATION

VI. JAVERT

VII. THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR

VIII. COUNTER-STROKE

Part Two: Cosette

I. WATERLOO