100 Must-Read Historical Novels by Rennison Nick;Rennison Nick;

Author:Rennison, Nick;Rennison, Nick;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2010-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

VICTOR HUGO (1802–85) FRANCE

NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS (1831)

During his lifetime, Victor Hugo was known as much as a poet and a dramatist as he was as a novelist but today he is remembered outside France almost solely for his vast, panoramic fiction. Les Misérables may be most familiar today in its stage musical adaptation but the book, one of the greatest of all nineteenth-century French novels, demands still to be read. The story of the noble-hearted convict Valjean and his relentless pursuit by the corrupt police inspector Javert opens in the year of Waterloo and culminates in the unsuccessful uprising against monarchical rule that took place in the streets of Paris in June 1832. A year earlier than the date which marks the climax of Les Misérables, Hugo, then still a young man in his twenties, published Notre-Dame de Paris, most often known in English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The novel is set in medieval Paris. At its heart is the story of the beautiful foundling Esmeralda, the men who try to seduce her, and Quasimodo, hunchbacked bell-ringer at the cathedral of Notre-Dame, who loves her. Quasimodo was abandoned soon after his birth because of his deformities and only survived because he was taken into the cathedral by Frollo, its archdeacon. He repays Frollo with his devotion but everything changes with the arrival of Esmeralda. The archdeacon becomes obsessed by the gypsy dancer, torn between priestly celibacy and his lust for her. His scheming to possess her results in her entanglement in a murder case and Quasimodo is obliged to rescue her from hanging. He brings her into the sanctuary of the cathedral but there proves to be no way to avoid the tragic fate that awaits all three of them. Melodramatic and highly-coloured, Notre-Dame de Paris deserves the fame it has gained from countless stage, film and TV adaptations. It remains one of the most memorable of all historical romances.

Film version: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939, starring Charles Laughton as Quasimodo)

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Les Misérables; The Man Who Laughs

Gustave Flaubert, Salammbo; Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed; Charles Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth; » Sir Walter Scott, Quentin Durward

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