Les Miserables
by Victor Hugo
Les Miserables (1862) was Victor Hugo's triumph, published over thirty years after its genesis when Hugo was nearly caught in the gunfire of the Paris Uprising (June Rebellion) of 1832. The book is set in the aftermath of the anti-monarchist insurrection led by the Republicans to reverse the 1830 "July Monarchy" of Louis-Philippe. It was a particularly terrible time of turmoil and suffering in France, with widespread food shortages, poverty, and a cholera epidemic that killed over 100,000 people. This novel is a great example of the genre, Romanticism. We offer Volume I of the 1887 English translation by Isabel F. Hapgood.
Book First - A Just Man - Chapter I - M. Myriel
Chapter II - M. Myriel Becomes M. Welcome
Chapter III - A Hard Bishopric for a Good Bishop
Chapter IV - Works Corresponding to Words
Chapter V - Monseigneur Bienvenu Made His Cassocks Last Too Long
Chapter VI - Who Guarded His House For Him
Chapter VIII - Philosophy After Drinking
Chapter IX - The Brother As Depicted By the Sister
Chapter X - The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light
Chapter XII - The Solitude of Monseigneur Welcom
Chapter XIII - What He Believed
Book Second - The Fall - Chapter I - The Evening of a Day of Walking
Chapter II - Prudence Counselled to Wisdom
Chapter III - The Heroism of Passive Obedience
Chapter IV - Details Concerning the Cheese-Dairies of Pontarlier
Chapter VII - The Interior of Despair
Chapter VIII - Billows and Shadows
Chapter XII - The Bishop Works
Book Third - In the Year 1817 - Chapter I - The Year 1817
Chapter II - A Double Quartette
Chapter IV - Tholomyes Is So Merry That He Sings a Spanish Ditty
Chapter VI - A Chapter In Which They Adore Eachother
Chapter VII - The Wisdom of Tholomyes
Chapter VIII - The Death of a Horse
Chapter IX - A Merry End to Mirth
Book Fourth - To Confide Is Sometimes to Deliver Into Someone's Power
Chapter II - First Sketch of Two Unprepossessing Figures
Book Fifth - The Descent - Chapter I - The History of a Progress in Black Glass Trinkets
Chapter III - Sums Deposited with Laffitte
Chapter IV - M. Madeleine in Mourning
Chapter V - Vague Flashes on the Horizon
Chapter VI - Father Fauchelevent
Chapter VII - Fauchelevent Becomes a Gardener in Paris
Chapter VIII - Madame Victurnien Expends Thirty Francs on Morality
Chapter IX - Madame Victurnien's Success
Chapter X - Result of the Success
Chapter XI - Christus Nos Liberavit
Chapter XII - M. Bamatabois's Inactivity
Chapter XIII - The Solution of Some Questions Connected with the Municipal Police
Book Sixth - Javert - Chapter I - The Beginning of Repose
Chapter II - How Jean May Become Champ
Book Seventh - The Champmathieu Affair - Chapter I - Sister Simplice
Chapter II - The Perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire
Chapter III - A Tempest in a Skull
Chapter IV - Forms Assumed by Suffering During Sleep
Chapter VI - Sister Simplice Put to the Proof
Chapter VII - The Traveller on His Arrival Takes Precautions for Departure
Chapter VIII - An Entrance by Favor
Chapter IX - A Place Where Convictions Are in Process of Formation
Chapter X - The System of Denials
Chapter XI - Champmathieu More and More Astonished
Book Eighth - A Counter Blow - Chapter I - In What Mirror M. Madeleine Contemplates His Hair
Chapter III - Javert Satisfied
Chapter IV - Authority Reasserts Its Rights