Les Miserables - Omnibus Edition

One of the most widely read novels of all time, Les Miserables was the crowning literary achievement of Victor Hugo’s career. An enormous melodrama set against the background of political upheaval in France following the rule of Napoleon I, the novel tells the story of the peasant Jean Valjean-unjustly imprisoned and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized police detective Javert. A monumental classic dedicated to the oppressed, Les Miserables captures the entirety of life in nineteenth-century France.

About the Author

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 Miserables (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 Pantheon.