On February 26, 1802 the founder of French Romanticism was born in Besançon, France, Victor Hugo. His father was a loyal follower of Napoleon, but his mother supported the royal family, and so young Hugo was forced to experience his parents’ difficult divorce.

The author stayed with her his mother to receive a solid education, but along with this he also received an innate hatred for the tactics of Napoleon, whom he often criticized in his later works, winning the favor of Louis II’. He came into contact with literature from an early age writing amateur poems, with which he won two student competitions.

In 1821, Victor Hugo married his childhood sweetheart Adele Fusser, in a marriage which was sealed by a tragedy, as the author’s younger brother, Eugene, was secretly in love with Adele. Eugene, losing his love, also lost his reason and found himself in an institution for the rest of his life. The couple’s relationship was fraught with tension due to mismatched characters, but they remained married to the end, and had five children.

In the same year, Victor Hugo acquires the his first brain child, a poetry collection entitled “Odes and diverse poems”which had a strong pro-royal character and awarded him an annual grant from the royal court.

Five years later he publishes the work that made him famous in the poetic circles of France, the “Odes and Ballads”. The now recognized lyric poet subsequently published dozens of poems and plays, which began to elevate him to high literary circles.

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