Living with Purpose

"When I speak about myself, I'm speaking about you. How can you not feel that? Ah! Foolish person, who believes that I am not you!" With these words, Victor Hugo, leader of the French Romantic movement, revealed his belief in the universality of human experience. His dedication to celebrating the human soul, to plumbing of the depths of our experiences, and to drawing people together flows throughout his work, far beyond his poetic masterpiece, Contemplations, where we find this insight about the connectedness of humanity.

In Living with Purpose: Inspiration from the Works of Victor Hugo, you can explore Hugo's vast, varied creations through original, engaging translations by an expert translator and through insightful introductions by a Hugo specialist. Hugo has often been hailed as France's most beloved poet and is considered by many to be France's best-but he is generally known to English speakers only for The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and/or Les Misérables. In this collection, however, you find not only excerpts from these and other intriguing novels, but also selections from Hugo's poetry, plays, political speeches, love letters, public appeals for social justice, and his representative and symbolic art. You have broad opportunities to appreciate Hugo's empathy and passion for living-and to discover the surprising relevance that this nineteenth-century French genius has for us today. From his heartfelt pleas on behalf of poor or abused children, to his understanding of God's presence in the world, to his battles for freedom, Hugo speaks to contemporary society.

Living with Purpose provides the historical, cultural, and biographical context essential to enjoying Hugo's genius, making Hugo's world easily accessible to English-speaking readers. The book's topical organization invites you to investigate his ideas about private, personal concerns-love, children, grief, death, nature, God, and the mysterious-as well as about such socially and politically important issues as liberty and democracy, tyranny, social justice, poverty, crime, education, progress, peace, and humanity. With over 25 illustrations of Hugo's artwork, Living with Purpose offers a tantalizing taste of his richly wide-ranging and provocative artistic talent. The appendices include (1) a timeline of Hugo's life and work contextualized within main historical events and (2) a quick reference list of English and French titles of his work.

With Living with Purpose, the editors have translated into English and updated the bilingual version of Victor Hugo on Things That Matter (published in 2010). Praise for that edition is equally relevant to this new book:

• "Marva Barnett pulls off a neat trick: in grouping Hugo's writing across genres by themes with universal resonance and timeless appeal, it proves that what ought to matter to the modern reader is Victor Hugo."
  -Isabelle Roche, Bennington College, in The French Review
• "Throughout, the book is animated with Barnett's own love and appreciation of Hugo's work and what emerges is not just a showcase of the writer's literary creations but an insight into 'one great, intriguing mind'." -Andrea Beaghton, in Echo Hugo
• "Barnett reveals herself to be exactly the kind of reader that Hugo wanted to attract to his works. The result is both meticulously organized and compellingly informative, arranging extracts from well over thirty of Hugo's writings (as well as samples of his graphic work) according to key aspects of the poet's private and public life." -Bradley Stephens, University of Bristol, in French Studies: A Quarterly Review)