Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Misérables is a sprawling 1500-page tale of tragedy, strife and redemption. This novel, initially scorned by French critics as immoral, overly sentimental and traitorous to the regime, is now considered one of the greatest literary works of the nineteenth century.

The handwritten page reproduced here shows a sampling of the amount of work Hugo put in to craft Les Misérables. And it is not just the front cover of our Victor Hugo, Les Misérables journal that pays tribute to his most enduringly popular piece of writing. Prominently displayed on the back cover is a piece of art as iconic as the writing itself: the sketch of Cosette drawn by French illustrator Émile Bayard for the novel’s first edition.