Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was born in Besan�on, France on February 26, 1802. Originally on track to become a lawyer, he instead became France's revered Romantic poet, novelist, and dramatist. He is the author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Mis�rables, among countless others. For fifteen years, Hugo lived on the island of Guernsey in political exile following the 1851 coup d'�tat by Napoleon III. There he wrote The Toilers of the Sea, published in 1866. When Hugo died in 1885, he was given a national funeral and burial in Paris' Pantheon.
