Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was an internationally renowned novelist, playwright and poet known for his political activism and human rights advocacy. "If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away," the larger–than–life Victor Hugo once confessed. Indeed, this 19th–century French author's books – from the epic drama Les Misérables to the classic unrequited love story The Hunchback of Notre Dame – have spanned the ages, their themes of morality and redemption as applicable to our times as to his.