Les Misérables by Victor Hugo [PDF]
by InfoBooks
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo is a sweeping novel about guilt, grace, and the fight for a better world. Set against the backdrop of post-revolutionary France, it follows one man's struggle to escape his past while an entire society grapples with inequality.
You can download this classic novel in PDF format and start reading right away. This free edition lets you carry Hugo's entire epic on any device, wherever you go.
Few people know this book beyond the musical adaptation, but the original novel goes far deeper into the politics, philosophy, and raw human emotion that inspired it. Ideal for readers who want substance alongside story.
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
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Information: Les Misérables
- Author: Victor Hugo
- Publication Date: 1862
- Main Characters:
- Jean Valjean: An ex-convict who transforms himself into a compassionate benefactor after a bishop's act of mercy, spending his life pursued by the law while trying to do good.
- Inspector Javert: A rigid police officer obsessed with upholding the law, who pursues Valjean for decades and cannot reconcile mercy with his worldview.
- Fantine: A young working-class woman who sacrifices everything, including her health and dignity, to support her illegitimate daughter Cosette.
- Cosette: Fantine's daughter, raised in misery by the Thénardiers until Valjean rescues her and raises her as his own.
- Marius Pontmercy: An idealistic young law student who joins the republican cause and falls in love with Cosette, forcing Valjean to confront his need to let go.
- Brief Summary: Les Misérables tells the story of Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for nineteen years for stealing bread, who breaks parole and reinvents himself as a factory owner and mayor. He adopts Cosette, the daughter of a dying woman named Fantine, and spends years evading the relentless Inspector Javert. The novel culminates during the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, where love, sacrifice, and political idealism collide. Hugo uses these intertwined lives to argue for social reform and human compassion over punitive justice.
- Thematic Analysis: The central tension in Les Misérables is between law and mercy. Hugo repeatedly shows that strict legalism, embodied by Javert, destroys lives, while grace, embodied by the Bishop of Digne and later Valjean, transforms them. The novel also examines class struggle, the failure of institutions to protect the vulnerable, and whether revolution can truly deliver the equality it promises.
- Historical Context: Hugo wrote Les Misérables over a period of nearly two decades, finishing it during his political exile from France. The novel draws heavily on the social conditions of the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy, periods marked by extreme poverty and political unrest. The 1832 June Rebellion, a real but largely forgotten uprising, serves as the novel's dramatic climax and reflects Hugo's own republican sympathies.
