PENGUIN BOOKS
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.