The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

By Victor Hugo

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Victor Hugo’.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Hugo includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

eBook features:
* The complete unabridged text of ‘The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)’
* Beautifully illustrated with images related to Hugo’s works
* Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
* Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788772921

Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a French poet and novelist. Born in Besançon, Hugo was the son of a general who served in the Napoleonic army. Raised on the move, Hugo was taken with his family from one outpost to the next, eventually setting with his mother in Paris in 1803. In 1823, he published his first novel, launching a career that would earn him a reputation as a leading figure of French Romanticism. His Gothic novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) was a bestseller throughout Europe, inspiring the French government to restore the legendary cathedral to its former glory. During the reign of King Louis-Philippe, Hugo was elected to the National Assembly of the French Second Republic, where he spoke out against the death penalty and poverty while calling for public education and universal suffrage. Exiled during the rise of Napoleon III, Hugo lived in Guernsey from 1855 to 1870. During this time, he published his literary masterpiece Les Misérables (1862), a historical novel which has been adapted countless times for theater, film, and television. Towards the end of his life, he advocated for republicanism around Europe and across the globe, cementing his reputation as a defender of the people and earning a place at Paris’ Panthéon, where his remains were interred following his death from pneumonia. His final words, written on a note only days before his death, capture the depth of his belief in humanity: “To love is to act.”

Book preview

The Complete Works of

VICTOR HUGO

VOLUME 3 OF 25

The Last Day of a Condemned Man

Parts Edition

By Delphi Classics, 2015

Version 3

COPYRIGHT

‘The Last Day of a Condemned Man’

Victor Hugo: Parts Edition (in 25 parts)

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78877 292 1

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: [e-mail]

www.delphiclassics.com

Victor Hugo: Parts Edition

This eBook is Part 3 of the Delphi Classics edition of Victor Hugo in 25 Parts. It features the unabridged text of The Last Day of a Condemned Man from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Victor Hugo, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Victor Hugo or the Complete Works of Victor Hugo in a single eBook.

Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

VICTOR HUGO

IN 25 VOLUMES

Parts Edition Contents

The Novels

1, Bug-Jargal

2, Hans of Iceland

3, The Last Day of a Condemned Man

4, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

5, Claude Gueux

6, Les Misérables

7, Toilers of the Sea

8, The Man Who Laughs

9, Ninety-Three

The Poetry

10, The Complete Poems

The Plays

11, Cromwell

12, The Burgraves

13, Hernani

14, Lucrèce Borgia

15, Marie Tudor

16, Ruy Blas

Selected Non-Fiction

17, Napoleon the Little

18, Extracts from William Shakespeare

19, Letter to the London News Regarding John Brown

20, On Capital Punishment

21, Extracts from Satirists and Moralists

22, The History of a Crime

The Criticism

23, The Criticism

The Biographies

24, The Memoirs of Victor Hugo

25, Victor Hugo: His Life and Work by G. Barnett Smith

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The Last Day of a Condemned Man

Translated by Eugenia De B.

Published in 1829 by editor Charles Gosselin, this novel is a political indictment for the abolition of the death penalty.  Hugo met several times with the spectacle of the guillotine and he strove to portray its cold-blooded evil in this short work of fiction. The novel recounts the thoughts of a man condemned to die, who writes down his thoughts and fears while waiting for execution. He does not betray his name to the reader or what he has done, though he vaguely hints that he has killed someone.

The boarding school on Rue Margeritte that Hugo attended

CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE 1832 EDITION

FIRST PAPER

SECOND PAPER

THIRD PAPER

FOURTH PAPER

FIFTH PAPER

SIXTH PAPER

SEVENTH PAPER

EIGHTH PAPER

NINTH PAPER

TENTH PAPER

ELEVENTH PAPER

TWELFTH PAPER

THIRTEENTH PAPER

FOURTEENTH PAPER

FIFTEENTH PAPER

SIXTEENTH PAPER

SEVENTEENTH PAPER

EIGHTEENTH PAPER

NINETEENTH PAPER

TWENTIETH PAPER

TWENTY-FIRST PAPER

TWENTY-SECOND PAPER

TWENTY-THIRD PAPER

TWENTY-FOURTH PAPER

TWENTY-FIFTH PAPER

TWENTY-SIXTH PAPER

TWENTY-SEVENTH PAPER

TWENTY-EIGHTH PAPER

TWENTY-NINTH PAPER

THIRTIETH PAPER

THIRTY-FIRST PAPER

THIRTY-SECOND PAPER

THIRTY-THIRD PAPER

THIRTY-FOURTH PAPER

THIRTY-FIFTH PAPER

THIRTY-SIXTH PAPER

THIRTY-SEVENTH PAPER

THIRTY-EIGHTH PAPER

THIRTY-NINTH PAPER

FORTIETH PAPER

FORTY-FIRST PAPER

FORTY-SECOND PAPER

FORTY-THIRD PAPER

FORTY-FOURTH PAPER

FORTY-FIFTH PAPER

FORTY-SIXTH PAPER

PREFACE TO THE 1832 EDITION

At the head of the earlier editions of this work, published at first without the name of the author, there was nothing but the following lines.

There are two ways of accounting for the existence of this work. Either there really has been found a bundle of yellow, ragged, papers, on which were inscribed, exactly as they came, the last thoughts of a wretched being; or else there has been a man, a dreamer, occupied in observing nature for the advantage of art, a philosopher, a poet, who, having been seized with these forcible ideas, could not rest until he had given them the tangible form of a volume. Of these two explanations, the reader will choose that which he prefers.

As is seen, at the time when this book was first published, the author did not deem fit to give publicity to the full extent of his thoughts. He preferred waiting to see whether the work would be fully understood. It has been. The author may now, therefore, unmask the political and social ideas, which he wished to render popular under this harmless literary guise. He avows openly, that The Last Day of a Condemned is only a pleading, direct or indirect, as is preferred, for the abolition of the penalty of death. His design herein and what he would wish posterity to see in his work, if its attention should ever be given to so slight a production, is, not to make out the special defense of any particular criminal, such defense being transitory as it is easy; he would plead generally and permanently for all accused persons, present and future; it is the great point of human right, stated and pleaded before society at large, that highest judicial court; it is the sombre and fatal question which breathes obscurely in the depths of each capital offense, under the triple envelopes of pathos in which legal eloquence wraps them; it is the question of life and death, I say, laid bare, denuded and despoiled of the sonorous twistings of the bar, revealed in daylight, and placed where it should be seen; in its true and hideous position, not in the law courts, but on the scaffold, not among the judges, but with the executioner!

This is what he has desired to effect. If futurity should award him the glory of having succeeded, which he dares not hope, he desires no other crown.

He proclaims and repeats it, then, in the name of all accused persons, innocent or guilty, before all courts, all juries, and ail judges. And in order that his pleading should be as universal as his cause, he has been careful, while writing The Last Day of a Condemned, to omit anything of a special, individual, contingent, relative, or modifiable nature, as also any episode, anecdote, known event, or real name, keeping to the limit (if limit it may be termed!) of pleading the cause of any condemned prisoner whatever, executed at any time, for any offense. Happy if, with no other aid than his thoughts, he has mined sufficiently into the subject to make a heart bleed, under the œs triplex of a magistrate! Happy if he could render merciful those who consider themselves just! Happy if, penetrating sufficiently deep within the judge, he has sometimes reached the man.

Three years ago, when this book first appeared, some people thought it was worth while to dispute the authorship! Some asserted that it was an English book, and others that it was an American