50 Fun Facts About Victor Hugo

Who is the hero of Les Misérables?

Hugo first scribbled the name Jean Tréjean in his notes on the Toulon prison.

Which Paris cathedral gives its name to Hugo's 1831 novel about a hunchback?

The novel shamed the city into restoring the neglected building.

In which city was Hugo born?

His father was a general in Napoleon's army, so the family moved constantly.

What was Hugo's father's profession?

Léopold Hugo enlisted in the Revolutionary army at 14; Hugo's grandfather was the wood merchant.

Prisoner number 24601 in Les Misérables comes from what?

Hugo believed he was conceived on 24 June 1801.

What did the teenage Hugo write in his diary in 1816?

His life went on to parallel Chateaubriand's in Romanticism, politics and exile.

Why did the Académie française doubt Hugo's 1817 competition poem?

The poem earned him an honourable mention.

Whom did Hugo marry in 1822?

They lived together for nearly 46 years despite affairs on both sides.

Hugo's first poetry collection in 1822 earned him a pension from which king?

He was only 20 when Odes et poésies diverses appeared.

Which 1830 play's premiere sparked nights of rioting between romantics and classicists?

It announced the arrival of French Romanticism at the Comédie-Française.

Which Verdi opera is based on Hugo's play Le roi s'amuse?

Verdi also adapted Hernani as Ernani in 1844.

Hugo's 1829 novel about a man awaiting execution was called what?

It influenced Camus, Dickens and Dostoyevsky and was published anonymously.

What was Hugo's first novel, published in 1823?

Bug-Jargal followed three years later.

What name did Hugo first scribble for the hero of Les Misérables in his prison notes?

He visited the Bagne of Toulon in 1839 but did not start writing until 1845.

Which Belgian publisher issued Les Misérables after a six-month press campaign?

Only the first part, Fantine, was launched at first, selling out within hours.

In the famous (if apocryphal) tale, what did Hugo telegraph his publisher in 1862?

The publisher supposedly replied with a single exclamation mark.

Which author privately called Les Misérables "repulsive and inept"?

Flaubert found in it neither truth nor greatness; the masses loved it anyway.

Toilers of the Sea features a battle with what creature?

The book popularised the Guernsey word pieuvre in French.

Which French word for squid entered the language thanks to Toilers of the Sea?

It was the term used on Guernsey, where Hugo spent 15 years in exile.

Hugo's last novel, Ninety-Three, is set during which period?

It was a subject he had avoided until 1874.

How many attempts did Hugo need before being elected to the Académie française in 1841?

Academicians hostile to the romantic evolution had delayed his election.

Which king made Hugo a peer of France in 1845?

In the upper chamber he spoke against the death penalty and for Polish self-government.

Whose 1851 seizure of power drove Hugo into nearly two decades of exile?

Hugo openly called him a traitor to France.

On which island did Hugo live in exile from 1855 to 1870?

He had been expelled from Jersey for supporting a newspaper that insulted Queen Victoria.

What was the name of Hugo's home in Saint Peter Port?

It is now a museum owned by the City of Paris.

Why was Hugo expelled from Jersey in 1855?

He moved on to the smaller island of Guernsey.

What was the title of Hugo's famous pamphlet mocking Napoleon III?

It was banned in France but still had a strong impact there.

Why did Hugo refuse Napoleon III's 1859 amnesty?

He returned only when the Third Republic was proclaimed in 1870.

Which American abolitionist's life did Hugo plead with the US government to spare in 1859?

His drawing Le Pendu was an homage to Brown after the hanging.

Hugo's 1848 speech against the death penalty ended with which line?

His influence was credited with removing the death penalty from the constitutions of Geneva, Portugal and Colombia.

What unusual food did Hugo eat during the 1870 Prussian siege?

As supplies dwindled he wrote that he was reduced to eating the unknown.

Hugo was a strong advocate for the creation of what?

He laid out the idea at the 1849 International Peace Congress in Paris.

Hugo helped found a body that led to which international copyright treaty?

He was a founding member of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale.

What did Hugo answer when a census-taker asked in 1872 if he was a Catholic?

He insisted his sons, and later himself, be buried without crucifix or priest.

How many attacks on Les Misérables did Hugo count in the Catholic press?

His works often appeared on the Church's list of banned books.

Which composer taught Hugo to play a song on the piano with one finger?

Hugo had little musical ability but inspired more than a thousand compositions.

Hugo described which composer as "a man of talent coupled with imbecility"?

By contrast he admired Gluck, Mozart, Weber, Meyerbeer and Beethoven.

Hugo wrote his only opera libretto, La Esmeralda, for which composer?

The 1836 opera closed after five performances but was revived in 2007 and 2008.

To whom did Hugo introduce Chopin, who became the composer's lover?

Hugo attended Chopin's funeral in 1849.

Roughly how many drawings did Hugo produce in his lifetime?

Drawing was his only creative outlet between 1848 and 1851, when he gave up writing for politics.

How did Hugo's favourite daughter Léopoldine die in 1843?

He learned of it from a newspaper in a café; the poem Demain, dès l'aube describes visiting her grave.

Who was Juliette Drouet?

She followed him into exile and wrote him some 20,000 letters.

What happened when Hugo and Léonie d'Aunet were caught in adultery in 1845?

As a new peer he was immune; she spent two months in prison and six in a convent.

Hugo recorded his affairs in code, like which English diarist?

He used Latin abbreviations, Spanish and homophones to disguise the entries.

What did Paris rename in Hugo's honour for his 80th year in 1881?

Letters were thereafter addressed to Mister Victor Hugo, In his avenue, Paris.

Roughly how many people joined Hugo's funeral procession in 1885?

Nietzsche called the state funeral a veritable orgy of bad taste.

With which two writers does Hugo share a crypt in the Panthéon?

Dumas was moved there in 2002, more than a century after Hugo.

Hugo is venerated as a saint in which religion?

The faith was founded in Vietnam in 1926.

What were Hugo's last written words, left in a note two days before he died?

He died of pneumonia on 22 May 1885, aged 83.

A bust of Hugo stands near which Beijing landmark he defended in print?

He criticised its destruction by Anglo-French forces in the Second Opium War.