HUGO, VICTOR MARIE

(1802-85) Fr, author; b. at Besancon; travelled with his f., General Count Hugo, 17741828, through Spain and Italy during Napoleonic campaigns; returned to Paris for education. From outset H.'s ‘private and public life were troubled, Nearly all his children died in his lifetime, and he lived his last years with his grandchildren. H, entered Parliament after Revolution of 1848; became ardent Republican, and after coup d’etat of Dec. 2, 1851, retired to Channel Islands until 1870; returned to Paris, and took deep interest in politics, working with all his might for abolition of capital punishment, etc, His funeral was a magnificent one, and he was laid to rest in the Pantheon, a perhaps the greatest figure in H. was the great leader of Romantic School of Fr. lit. (see under France), His poems, dramas, and romances, on every subject and in numberle forms, aroused an enthusiasm almost unparalleled in lit.; through him the current set definitely in favor of the new Romantic movement; his dramas, Hernani, 1830; Le Roi s’amuse, 1832; Lucrece Borgia, 1933, etc., and novels, Le Dernier Jour d'un condamne, 1829, Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831; Les Miserables, 1862; Les Travailleurs de la Mer, 1866; L’ Homme qui Rit, 1869; were epoch-making and were only surpa ed in greatne by his lyrics. H.’s rhetorical effects are somewhat alien to the austerer age which has followed; but he will always remain one of the literary giants of the XIX. cent.