Notre-Dame de Paris

By Victor Hugo Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, New York, 1888

Curated by Hayley Battaglia

Photographs by Hayley Battaglia

Victor Hugo

Notre-Dame de Paris

Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, New York, 1888

The life of Notre Dame de Paris began in 1828, when Victor Hugo signed a contract with his publisher, Gosselin, stipulating that he would write a novel similar to the widely read historical fiction of Walter Scott. Progress on the work was interrupted repeatedly, especially by the events of the July Revolution in Paris in 1830 which led to the abdication of Charles X

Ascension of Louis-Philippe to the French throne and establishment of the constitutional July Monarchy. These events bled into Hugo’s work, inspiring the themes of distrust in authority that pervade the novel and Notre-Dame de Paris was finally published on February 13, 1831.

Notre-Dame de Paris was not so much the historical novel requested by Gosselin (historical in the sense of a narrative woven around a specific historical event or figure), but rather a Gothic drama festooned with historical details such as dress, custom, and architecture.

As it turns out what we now would call “historic preservation” is at the heart of Notre-Dame de Paris, and architecture is one of Hugo’s central concerns. In his note in the 1832 edition Hugo writes, “But in any case, whatever the future of architecture may be, however our young architects may one day resolve the question of their art, while we wait for new monuments, let us preserve the old ones. Let us inspire the nation, if possible, with a love of our national architecture… .” Hugo views Notre Dame (and Paris’s historic architecture in general) as something precious, irreplaceable, and in danger of being lost. In some English translations of the novel, the title is altered to “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” mistakenly presenting the hunchbacked Quasimodo as the protagonist of the tale when in actuality, it is the great cathedral herself who carries the focus of the story and is brought alive in its telling.

The great international success of Hugo’s novel Notre Dame de Paris sparked a renewed interest in the cathedral and forever linked his name to it Not only did the novel reignite an interest in Notre Dame, but in pre-Renaissance architecture in general, shedding light on the need to preserve these historic buildings.

This edition is translated by Isabel F. Hapgood and includes illustrations by Luc-Olivier Merson, Gustave Brion, and Charles Edouard de Beaumont as well as a frontispiece by Herman Winthrop Pierce and photograph of the author taken by renowned portrait photographer, Felix Nadar. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. published Hapgood’s translation in 1888. Crowell originally had a bookbinding business, which he had started in Boston around 1860. Sixteen years later, he began a second venture, a publishing business in New York, which he merged with his bookbinding business in 1900. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. also published Hugo’s poetry anthologies, Les Miserables, and Ninety-Three, among other works.

Student Curator: Hayley Battaglia

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