Welcome to Annotating Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, an effort to annotate the marvelously rich proliferation of literary, classical, historical, and geographical references Hugo uses throughout his novel. Many of them were undoubtedly more familiar to his readers when the book was published in 1862, but nearly a century and a half later, time has widened the gulf of ready comprehension and reading some of the denser passages can feel akin to trying to wade through molasses. (Vol. III, Book One, Chapters X and XI (the introduction of Paris), with their page-long sentences packed end-to-end with references, are excellent examples.)

For more info about this site, including updates, see the "About" page.

Map images in the above menu are taken from an 1832 map of Paris, fittingly the year in which the uprisings took place. The illustration of Cosette is by Emile Bayard (1862), now in the public domain.