The house (and museum) of Victor Hugo, Paris

French author Victor Hugo, noted for his novels The Hunchback of Notre Dame(1831) and Les Miserables(1862), lived in Paris from 1832-1851, before his exile to Guernsey. His home is now a museum. His home is on the second floor and the museum of his paintings and works occupies the first floor.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is considered to be one of the greatest and best-known French writers. He was born in eastern France and arrived in Paris at the age of thirty. The rooms of his home are grand and luxurious. They are separated by their colour – the green room, the red damask lounge, etc. Many items are from his other residences, including his writing desk, and his bed where he died.

There is also a large collection of his autographs and family letters, but also letters from other writers, artists, actors, and politicians, such as Dumas, George Sand Alfred de Vigny, Baudelaire, and Sarah Bernhardt. There are also love letters between Léonie Biard and Juliette Drouet.

Hugo lived in Guernsey in exile from 1855-1870, after first going to Brussels then Jersey. He returned to Paris in 1870. He had five children. His wife Adele Foucher died in 1868 and his mistress Juliette Drouet died in 1883. Hugo's last written words, two days before his death in 1885 of pneumonia at the age of 83, are said to be, “To love is to act.”

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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