Victor Hugo was one of the most influential of early French Romantic writers, a man who so dominated French literature that the French refer to the nineteenth century as the century of Victor Hugo. He was born in Besançon on February 26, 1802, the third son of Leopold, an apparently ruthless soldier who rose in rank to general, and Sophia, who because she was unhappily married, eventually separated from Leopold and took her children to Paris where she raised them. Hugo turned to poetry early in life and by the age of seventeen was, with the help of his brothers, publishing a magazine, Conservateur Litteraire. Three years later, he had published a collection of poems that gained the attention of, as well as a royal pension from, King Louis XVIII. By the time he was thirty, his name was both well known and well respected.

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