1920s edition Les Miserables by Victor Hugo - Illustrated by Mead Schaeffer - Antique Book, French Literature

Circa 1920s (abridged) edition of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, illustrated by Mead Schaeffer.

Written by Victor Hugo. Illustrated by Mead Schaeffer. Published circa 1920s. Dodd, Mead, and Company, Publishers.

Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885) was one of France's greatest writers and a statesman who died a hero of France. As a writer, he's revered most in France as a poet, and in the United States as the author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables.

PREFACE

"So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age - the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night - are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot by useless."

The novel opens with Hugo's vivid description of protagonist Jean Valjean's physical appearance following his release from prison, having first been arrested for stealing a loaf of bread, an enduring image of life in France for the average person in the years following the Revolution.

FANTINE - BOOK I - THE FALL
The Night of a Day's Tramp

"An hour before sunset, on the evening of a day in the beginning of October 1815, a man travelling afoot entered the little town of Digne. The few persons who at this time were at their windows of their doors, regarded this traveler with a sort of distrust. It would have been been hard to find a passer-by more wretched in appearance. He was a man of middle height, stout and hardy, in the strength of maturity; he might have been forty-six or seven. A slouched leather cap half hid his face, bronzed by the sun and wind, and dripping with sweat. His shaggy breast was see through the coarse yellow shirt which at the neck was fastened by a small silver anchor; he wore a cravat twisted like a rope; coarse blue trousers, worn and shabby, white on one knee, and with holes in the other; an old ragged grey blouse, patched on one side with a piece of green cloth sewed with twine: upon his back was a well-filled knapsack, strongly buckled and quite new. In his hand he carried an enormous knotted stick: his stockingless feet were in hobnailed shoes; his hair was cropped and his beard long.

"The sweat, the heat, his long walk, and the dust, added an indescribable meanness to his tattered appearance."

Hugo's last words before he died: "To love is to act."

Mead Schaeffer (1898 - 1980) was an American illustrator, and became one of the most sought after and highest paid illustrators in the world.

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Condition*: Fair. Lacks dust jacket, as issued. Gold-embossed brown cloth cover boards. Binding is intact but the spine's cloth is torn at the head and separated, exposing the mull, so that the front cover board is loose and the back is hanging on by a thread. The pages are clean, undamaged, and complete. Previous owner's name in top left corner of front endpaper.

* Based on Guidelines of the Independent Online Booksellers' Association.