The complete online text of La Légende des Siècles by Victor Hugo.

On 22 May 1885 Victor Hugo died, prompting international mourning unprecedented for a literary figure. Within an hour the periodical Gil Blas published a special edition, which sold out everywhere, and soon millions flocked to Paris in a spectacular disp...

No century of French literature has been better represented by a single author than the nineteenth, and no writer better personifies the French nineteenth century than Victor Hugo. His life span corresponds closely to the century's limits; for fully fift...

Victor Hugo, one of France's most prolific nineteenth-century authors, wrote novels, poems, and dramatic works. His career as a playwright began in 1816 and ended almost sixty years later. The dramas and prefaces that he wrote between 1826 and 1843 const...

Anamorphoses décadentes: L'Art de la défiguration 1880-1914, Etudes offertes à Jean de Palacio. Sous la direction d'Isabelle Krzywkowski et Sylvie Thorel-Cailleteau. Paris: Presses de l'université de Paris-Sorbonne, Collection "Recherches actuelles en littérature comparée", 2002: Pp. 261. Les auteurs de ce recueil d'articles consacré...

Sergio Quezada (coord.) Encrucijadas de la ciudadanía y de la democracia, Yucatán, 1812-2004 Mérida : Universidad autónoma de Yucatán, LVII Legislatura H. Congreso del Estado de Yucatán, 2005 L'ouvrage collectif, Encrucijadas, relate en neuf essais comment les Yucatèques ont construit leur citoyenneté depuis...

Swinburne was an English poet, dramatist, and critic. Though renowned in his lifetime for his lyric poetry, he is remembered today primarily for his rejection of Victorian mores. In the following excerpt, taken from a discussion of La légende des siècles, Swinburne lavishes praise on the work, favorably comparing it to the works of William Shakespeare and Dante.

In following review of La légende des siècles, which was originally published in The Nation in May 3, 1877, James discusses Hugo's strengths and weaknesses as a poet.