Selected Poems: Dual-Language Edition Tapa blanda - 2002 - 2002nd Edición

Born in 1802, the son of a high officer in Napoleon’s army, Victor Hugo spent his childhood against a background of military life in Elba, Corsica, Naples, and Madrid. After the Napoleonic defeat, the Hugo family settled in straitened circumstances in Paris, where, at the age of fifteen, Victor Hugo commenced his literary career with a poem submitted to a contest sponsored by the Académie Française. Twenty-four years later, Hugo was elected to the Académie, having helped revolutionize French literature with his poems, plays, and novels. Entering politics, he won a seat in the National Assembly in 1848; but in 1851, he was forced to flee the country because of his opposition to Louis Napoleon. In exile on the Isle of Guernsey, he became a symbol of French resistance to tyranny; upon his return to Paris after the Revolution of 1870, he was greeted as a national hero. He continued to serve in public life and to write with unabated vigor until his death in 1885. He was buried in the Pantheon with every honor the French nation could bestow.
Brooks Haxton's poetry translations include Dances for Flute and Thunder: Poems from the Ancient Greek, which was nominated for a PEN translation award, and Victor Hugo's Selected Poems for Penguin Classics.

Victor Hugo (1802-85) was a forceful and prolific writer. He became a committed social democrat and during the Second Empire of Napoleon III was exiled from France, living in the Channel Islands. His body is now buried in the Pantheon.

Brooks Haxton's poetry translations include Dances for Flute and Thunder: Poems from the Ancient Greek, which was nominated for a PEN translation award, and Victor Hugo's Selected Poems for Penguin Classics.