History of a Book. Victor Hugo Publishes the First Series of “The Legend of the Ages” (1859)

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Abstract:
This study presents 38 letters from V. Hugo, the head of the French school of romanticism, written by him in exile and dedicated to the preparation for publication of the first series of his poetry collection “The Legend of the Ages” (1859). Most of the letters are addressed to his publishers in Belgium — N. Parfait and P.-J. Hetzel, and two letters are responses. Dated from May 1 to October 1, 1859, the epistolary materials chronologically cover the entire period from the sending of the first package with the manuscript to Brussels until the moment when the book went on sale. Being addressed to the main participants in the publishing project, the letters are significant historical and literary sources, covering in detail the stages of preparing the book for printing, and contain a lot of new important factual material. Issues related to the publication of “La Légende des siècles” are the main topic of the letters, however, their content is not limited to them. Here one can find a profound assessment of the work by its author, numerous testimonies of the poet’s continuous improvement of the form and structure of the collection, sometimes a brief, sometimes a more detailed response to contemporary political events, etc. The correspondence of V. Hugo with his publishers, which constitutes the poet’s personal collection in the Manuscript Department of the National Library of Russia (F. 970), is published for the first time in full, both in the original language and in the author’s translation with comments.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/CM.2949-0510-2025-6-19-133
EDN:
https://elibrary.ru/OCFCGV
Author: Natalia A. Elagina
About the author: Natalia A. Elagina, Curator of Western European Manuscripts, Manuscripts Department, The National Library of Russia, Sadovaya St., 18, 191069 St. Petersburg, Russia. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Received: December 4, 2024
Date of Publication: March 15, 2025
Approved after reviewing : November 11, 2025
Publication Type: Scientific Publication of Archival Materials
For citation: Elagina N.A. “History of a Book. Victor Hugo Publishes the First Series of ‘The Legend of the Ages’ (1859).” Codex manuscriptus, issue 6. Moscow, IWL RAS Publ., 2025, pp. 19–133. (In Russian) https://doi.org/10.22455/CM.2949-0510-2025-6-19-133
Keywords: V. Hugo, “La Légende des siècles”, P.-J. Hetzel, N. Parfait, P. Meurice.

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