Notre-Dame of Paris: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

by Victor Hugo

Overview

More commonly known as "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame", Victor Hugo's Romantic novel of dark passions and unrequited love, "Notre-Dame de Paris", is translated with an introduction by John Sturrock in "Penguin Classics". In the vaulted Gothic towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral lives Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer. Mocked and shunned for his appearance, he is pitied only by Esmerelda, a beautiful gypsy dancer to whom he becomes completely devoted. Esmerelda, however, has also attracted the attention of the sinister archdeacon Claude Frollo, and when she rejects his lecherous approaches, Frollo hatches a plot to destroy her, that only Quasimodo can prevent. Victor Hugo's sensational, evocative novel brings life to the medieval Paris he loved, and mourns its passing in one of the greatest historical romances of the nineteenth century. John Sturrock's clear, contemporary translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing it as a passionate novel of ideas, written in defence of Gothic architecture and of a burgeoning democracy, and demonstrating that an ugly exterior can conceal moral beauty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781627939522
Publisher:	Start Classics
Publication date:	01/01/2014
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	515
File size:	666 KB

About the Author

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.

Date of Birth:

February 26, 1802

Date of Death:

May 22, 1885

Place of Birth:

Besançon, France

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

Pension Cordier, Paris, 1815-18