Presses Universitaires de France and Frémeaux & Associés offer this biography of Victor Hugo, analysed and explained by Gérard Gengembre, agrégé de Lettres modernes and a specialist in Victor Hugo. How do you account for the life and work of Victor Hugo, that ‘literary continent’, according to Gérard Gengembre? It is with this challenge in mind that the author undertakes a critical biography of the man who embodies, better than anyone else, the tensions and greatness of the nineteenth century. A national writer, a poet of genius and a leading figure of Romanticism, Victor Hugo was a royalist turned republican, a fierce opponent of Napoleon III, a political exile and a visionary with a humanist conscience. His life's work reveals the struggles, ideals and metamorphoses of a century, underpinned by an immense body of work. This biography traces the career of a man for whom literature should not only reflect the world, but also help to transform it. Claude COLOMBINI FRÉMEAUX