Victor Hugo was born on February 26, 1802 in Besancon, France. He was a poet, novelist, and dramatist and the most important French Romantic writer of the 19th Century. Hugo is best known for his novels "Notre-Dame de Paris" (a.k.a Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1831) and "Les Miserables" (1862).

Hugo created poems and novels that integrated political and philosophical questions with stories of his times. Many of Hugo's poems addressed the social disquiet of post-revolutionary France. Others to the glory of Napoleon. He wrote with simplicity and power of the joys and sorrows of life. Hugo authored an enormous body of work. Every morning he would write at least 100 lines of verse or 20 pages of prose.

A recurring theme in Hugo's work is humanity's ceaceless combat with evil. He eloquently stated the problems of his century and the great eternal human questions. Modern readers are still captured by the larger than life characters and re-creation of the swarming underworld of 19th Century Paris found in "Les Miserables."

Hugo died in Paris on the 23 of May, 1885 at the age of 83. His state funeral was attended by nearly two million people. It took ten thousand police control the crowds. On the first of June, Hugo was laid to rest in the Panthenon alongside Rousseau and Voltaire.

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