Praise

“Hugo’s genius was for the creation of simple and recognizable myth. The huge success of Les Misérables as a didactic work on behalf of the poor and oppressed is due to his poetic and myth-enlarged view of human nature.” —V. S. Pritchett

“It was Tolstoy who vindicated [Hugo’s] early ambition by judging Les Misérables one of the world’s great novels, if not the greatest… [His] ability to present the extremes of experience ‘as they are’ is, in the end, Hugo’s great gift.” —From the Introduction by Peter Washington