In 1864 Hugo published a large non-fiction work titled William Shakespeare. When he had begun writing the book, he had intended for it to be an introduction for a collection of French translations written by his son, Francois Victor Hugo. However, the work grew to be approximately 300 pages in length and Hugo had to write a separate introduction to the plays.
William Shakespeare begins with an approximately twenty page biography, filled with many inaccuracies, and then becomes a work of literary criticism focusing on the literary geniuses of history, focusing on not only Shakespeare, but also Homer, Aeschylus, Lucretius, Juvenal, Tacitus, Dante and Cervantes, to name but a few. Deciding there was more of Hugo in the work than Shakespeare, some French critics cynically suggested he should have entitled the work Myself.
To provide readers with a sample of this unusual work, selections from Book V, The Mind and the Masses, are available in this collection.