One of his poetry collections (
Les Contemplations, 1856) ranks among the most beautiful ever written, and his novel
Les Misérables (1862) is universally acknowledged as a masterpiece. The length of Hugo's works is daunting: eighteen fifteen-hundred-page volumes of works, fragments, letters, and drawings constitute the reference edition.
Some publication statistics might give an idea of the extent and duration of Hugo's achievement: during his lifetime Hugo's works were published three times more frequently than those of other Romantic writers (including Alfred de Musset, Alfred de Vigny, and Stendhal), and five times more often than those of mid-and late-century writers (including Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola, Arthur Rimbaud, and Charles Baudelaire). During the same time his works were published twice as often as those of French classical authors: Jean de la Fontaine, Jean Racine, and Nicolas Boileau. More recently, from 1960 to 1971, he was the second most-published dead author in France (200 editions), following only Honoré de Balzac (373 editions), and was published more often than Alexandre Dumas père (129), Molière (122), or Stendhal (115).
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