Victor Hugo – Interesting Literature

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

French literature has often been one step ahead of the literary curve, to risk mixing our progressive metaphors. Before T. S. Eliot and other Anglophone poets had found a way to write about the modern city, Charles Baudelaire had already shown a way forward. In the realm of medieval romance, French writers and troubadours led the way. Gustave Flaubert influenced James Joyce, Henry James, and countless others. So, in this post, we thought we’d pay homage to French literature and Francophone writers by sharing a dozen of our favourite interesting facts about French writers and French literature.

The most popular novel among soldiers in the American Civil War was Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.

Georges Perec wrote a novel, La disparition, without once using the letter ‘e’ (apart from four times on the title-page, presumably, when the author’s name is cited).

French philosopher and critic Roland Barthes was killed by a laundry van.

French writer Colette started her working day by picking the fleas off her cat and would write only on blue paper, by artificial light, in her bare feet.

Five fun facts about Victor Hugo, the celebrated author of Les Misérables

1. He had an unusual technique for dealing with writer’s block. While he was writing – or trying to write – Les Misérables, Victor Hugo found himself suffering from colygraphia (that’s our suggested technical word for ‘writer’s block’). So he decided to take all his clothes off, take himself off to a room where he had only pen and paper for company, and force himself to write, without even the distraction of clothes to derail him from his task. His servants reportedly had orders that they weren’t to return his clothes to him until he had written something. He worked on Les Misérables for many years, beginning work on it in the 1840s but not finishing it until 1862.

12 Interesting Facts about French Literature

Five Fascinating Facts about Victor Hugo