Physical description

Hard cover book. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Author: Victor Hugo
Illustrator: Arthur A Dixon
Publisher: Collins Clear-Type Press
Date: 1910-1925
Further Information: Red Cloth plain hardcover with lettering and patterning to spine in gilt. The spine has a Library label with an inscription.

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on the spine with typed text PAT 843 HUG
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Warrnambool Mechanics Institute and Free Library. Inside the first front, loose end paper has a sticker from Corangamite Regional Library Service. Inside the first, front loose end paper has a stamp from Corangamite Regional Library Service

Summary

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is Victor Hugo's 1831 historical novel set in fifteenth-century Paris. It follows Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer of Notre-Dame Cathedral; Esmeralda, a beautiful Romani street dancer; Claude Frollo, the tormented archdeacon obsessed with her; and Captain Phoebus, the soldier she loves. The novel is as much a portrait of the cathedral itself and medieval Paris as it is a story of its characters. Hugo used the book partly as a plea for the preservation of Gothic architecture, which was being neglected and demolished in his own era. The novel's success is credited with sparking renewed public interest in Notre-Dame and Gothic buildings generally, which contributed to the eventual restoration campaign led by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the 1840s.