It’s the birthday of Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885), known chiefly throughout the English-speaking world as the author of Les Misérables (1862) but better known in France as one of their country’s greatest poets. He is the most important French writer of the Romantic movement; others need not apply.

Hugo’s parents, Joseph-Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo and Sophie Trébuchet*, were greatly at odds with one another: J-L-S was a high-ranking officer in Napoleon’s army, while Sophie was a Royalist whose possible lover was later executed for plotting against Napoléon. So, you know. Napoléon issues. Lover issues. Hugo grew up largely under his mother’s influence and shared her religious and political sympathies for years, but gradually moved to republicanism.

I’m just going to admit this: what I know about 19th century French history could be crammed into a haiku. I think the women wore empire waists. But Hugo’s work was steeped in the political and social climate of his times, so briefly: Napoléon Bonaparte was exiled in 1815 while Hugo was still a young student. Enter Napoléon’s nephew, Louis-Napoléon (b. 1808): unrest, uprisings, failed coups, exiles. By 1848, Hugo supported L-N for the presidency, but then L-N moved to the right and Hugo moved to the left and when L-N essentially became dictator in 1851, Hugo exiled himself and spent most of the next twenty years in Guernsey. L-N lost power after 1870 and Hugo returned to live in France (mostly) for the rest of his life.

So Hugo started out writing royalist poems and published his first novel, Hans of Iceland, in 1823. His 1827 play, Cromwell, contained an extremely influential preface explaining his doctrine of Romanticism, followed by his 1830 play, Hernani. In 1829 he published a novel, The Last Days of a Condemned, which condemned the death penalty, and in 1831 published The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (whew–something we all recognize). He began writing Les Misérables in 1845, worked at it sporadically due to political unrest, and after 1848 didn’t work on it again until about 1861. The novel was not only enormously popular internationally but had a huge impact on French policy, bettering the situations of released convicts and the poor. The novel has also been “bastardized” many times over by various translators, playwrights, and publishers, who have changed things to suit themselves. For example, an edition came out in the South in the early 1860s with all anti-slavery references simply omitted.

The darkest moment of Hugo’s life was when his beloved 19-year-old daughter, Léopoldine, drowned at 19 along with her husband, who tried to save her. Hugo was devastated and wrote many poems about her death, most famously, “Tomorrow, At Dawn.”

Have a perfectly acceptable Monday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.

*Yes, trebuchet: a medieval catapult-like siege engine. If there’s a cooler last name out there than “Trébuchet,” I don’t know what it is. Fun fact: we keep a trebuchet in our driveway.