RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksThe Novel of the Century...vividly traces the origin and development of Hugo’s most famous work, assessing its impact on the novel as a genre … The original inspiration for Les Misérables that the spirit was urging Hugo to finish came from scenes of social despair he had witnessed in Paris...As Bellos notes, the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen spoke of society owing ‘subsistence to citizens of misfortune,’ defined as orphans, the sick, the old, and the infirm, but made no mention of the able-bodied poor … Stylistically, claims Bellos, Hugo broke new ground. He admired Shakespeare for his vast cast of characters, each with a vocabulary reflecting his or her class and occupation.
Frances Wilson
RaveThe Los Angeles Review of Books...[an] exquisite biography ... She follows De Quincey’s own approach of skipping 'the hackneyed roll-call' of a person’s life 'chronologically arranged,' and instead focuses on key incidents that shaped and obsessed him, many of these being 'scenes of terror, deluge and sudden death' ... Wilson chronicles De Quincey’s descent with admirable acuity, and her treatment of his literary output is equally sharp.
