The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Unabridged)
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When Victor Hugo was born in 1802, his father, General Leopold Hugo, apparently exclaimed, ‘He looks like the gargoyles of Notre Dame!’ When he died in 1885, he might have been taken instead for one of the marble saints which also decorate the great cathedral, such was the reverence in which he was held amongst the French people. This was because he belonged to a long line of French authors and intellectuals, from Voltaire to Jean-Paul Sartre, who took the ideals they espoused in their writings into the political arena, the courts of justice and even onto the barricades, without in any way compromising their artistic integrity. While he was producing his play Hernani in 1829, his publisher was becoming increasingly impatient for the delivery of a substantial historical novel. Hugo finally sat down to it in July, 1830, and finished it in six months. The title he gave it was Notre Dame de Paris, and its impact was immediate and far-reaching. Complete and unabridged on 17CDs and read by Bill Homewood, who’s other recordings for Naxos AudioBooks include She, Tom Jones, Allan Quatermain, The Red & the Black, The Three Musketeers and the Four Just Men series.