The collection features the second part of Victor Hugo’s epic novel “Les Miserables” — “Cosette”. The book was released in a small format and has a mottled gray-blue binding with brown streaks. It was published in 1875 in Paris in the printing house of Charles Lahure, a French publisher, writer and printer, founder of the Lahure printing house, popular throughout Europe. The Lahure family was engaged in publishing popular literature for children and youth with illustrations by famous French artists. Often the books of this printing house were produced in luxurious bindings which bore the signature of the artist.

Victor Marie Hugo was a French writer, political and public figure, senator from the Seine Department and a member of the French Academy. He is the author of the novels “Notre Dame de Paris”, “The Man Who Laughs”, the plays “Cromwell”, “Lucrezia Borgia” and other works.

His love of literature began with the works of French writer and diplomat François-René de Chateaubriand, who is also considered the “father of romanticism”. Victor Hugo wrote in his diary on July 10, 1816, “I shall be Chateaubriand or nothing” — and eventually became one of the most famous representatives of romanticism. This ideological and artistic trend was characteristic of the culture of Europe and the United States at the end of the 18th — first half of the 19th century.

The epic novel “Les Miserables” is considered the pinnacle of Victor Hugo’s work and one of the most famous literary pieces of the 19th century. The book, which was first published in 1862, was popular with contemporaries and subsequently has been reprinted many times. The novel has been translated into many languages and has become part of school literature programs in different countries of the world. The first film adaptation was released in 1913, the most recent one — in 2019.

One of the admirers of Victor Hugo’s work was the Russian classic Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. This is what he wrote about “Les Miserables”,