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VICTOR HUGO by Matthew Josephson

VICTOR HUGO

By

Pub Date: Oct. 16th, 1942
Publisher: Doubleday, Doran

A biography of the herculean Hugo which is commensurate with its subject and does full justice to man, poet, novelist, playwright. Josephson does not vary the conventional and just interpretation of Hugo, nor make him any more attractive than he was. His biography is sound, comprehensive, scholarly. In prestige and accomplishment, Hugo is shown as eminently great; in many ways, singularly commonplace. A more than life-sized man, who for all his tremendous vitality was essentially bourgeois and is best remembered as Is bon papa Hugo. Josephson has shown him in rounded portraiture. He is a capable biographer. But one wonders -- is there, today, interest in Hugo?