Victor Hugo (1802-85) was the most forceful, prolific and versatile of French nineteenth-century writers. He wrote Romantic costume dramas, many volumes of lyrical and satirical verse, political and other journalism, criticism and several novels, the best known of which are Les Miserables (1862) and the youthful Notre-Dame de Paris (1831). A royalist and conservative as a young man, Hugo later became a committed social democrat and during the Second Empire of Napoleon III was exiled from France, living in the Channel Islands. He returned to Paris in 1870 and remained a great public figure until his death: his body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe before being buried in the Pantheon.

John Sturrock is Deputy Editor of The Times Literary Supplement. He read modern languages at Oxford and Sussex Universities and has translated from French and Spanish. He is the author of two books, The French New Novels (1969) and Paper Tigers: The Ideal Fictions of Jorge Luis Borge (1977).

Victor Hugo's classic adventure story tells of the tragic figure of Quasimodo, the hunchback bellringer of Notre-Dame Cathedral and his devotion to La Esmeralda, the flamboyant gypsy dancer.

When the demented archdeacon Claude Frollo plans to abduct La Esmeralda, he employs Quasimodo to do the job for him. But the plan goes horribly wrong, and Esmeralda finds herself charged with the murder of Phoebus, the man she was in love with. In a thrilling scene of high drama, her kidnapper becomes her rescuer; but for how long can she remain concealed from the evil Frollo? In a wonderfully evocative novel, Victor Hugo brings medieval Paris to glorious, bustling life.