Juliette Drouet and Les Misérables
Juliette Drouet letters to Victor Hugo
Juliette Drouet and Les Misérables
Juliette Drouet "reporting" on the Second Republic
Juiliette Drouet's Illustrations in her letters to Victor Hugo
Slang and neologisms in the letters of Juliette Drouet
Medicine and disease in the letters of Juliette Drouet
Drouet transcribed Hugo’s works for his publishers, and was therefore his first reader.
Unfortunately there are very few mentions of Hugo’s oeuvre in this collection of her correspondence. The letters in the Leeds collection mostly cover the French Second Republic (1848–1851), during which Hugo put his literary work on hold as he was elected deputy in 1848 and 1849.
There are mentions of the characters of Les Misérables, such as Cosette or “Jean Tréjean”, who would later become Jean Valjean.
In this letter dated 7 January 1847, Drouet says that she has finished copying the manuscript of Jean Tréjean that Hugo gave her the previous day, and eagerly asks him to bring the following pages to their next meeting.
Hugo started writing Les Misérables in 1845, under the provisional title of Les Misères (thus with Jean Tréjean as the main character). He took a long break during the Second Republic, only resuming and expanding the work whilst in exile in Guernsey, his refuge after the coup of Napoleon III in 1851.
It was published to great acclaim in 1862, under the new name of ‘Les Misérables’ (with Jean Valjean).
