The Modern Library Classics / Les Misérables, English edition

I. Monsieur Myriel

In 1815, Monsieur Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was bishop of Digne.1 He was an elderly man of about seventy-five and he had occupied the seat of Digne since 1806.

There is something we might mention that has no bearing whatsoever on the tale we have to tell not even on the background. Yet it may well serve some purpose, if only in the interests of precision, to jot down here the rumors and gossip that had circulated about him the moment he first popped up in the diocese. True or false, what is said about people often has as much bearing on their lives and especially on their destinies as what they do. Monsieur Myriel was the son of a councillor of the Aix parliament, a member of the noblesse de robe.2 They reckoned his father had put him down to inherit his position and so had married him off very early in the piece when he was only eighteen or twenty, as they used to do quite a lot in parliamentary families. Charles Myriel, married or no, had, they said, set tongues wagging. He was a good-looking young man, if on the short side, elegant, charming, and witty; he had given the best years of his life thus far to worldly pursuits and love affairs. Then the Revolution came along, events spiraled, parliamentary families were wiped out, chased away, hunted, scattered. Monsieur Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy soon after the Revolution broke out. His wife died there of the chest infection she d had for ages. They had no children. What happened next in the destiny of Monsieur Myriel? The collapse of the old society in France, the fall of his own family, the tragic scenes of 93,3 which were, perhaps, even more frightening for émigrés4 watching them from afar with the magnifying power of dread did these things cause notions of renunciation and solitude to germinate in his mind? Was he, in the middle of the distractions and amorous diversions that filled his life, suddenly hit by one of those mysterious and terrible jolts that sometimes

Julie Rose s acclaimed translations include Alexandre Dumas s The Knight of Maison-Rouge and Racine s Phèdre, as well as works by Paul Virilio, Jacques Rancière, Chantal Thomas, and many others. She is a recipient of the PEN medallion for translation and the New South Wales Premier s Translation Prize.
 
Adam Gopnik is the author of Paris to the Moon and Through the Children s Gate, and editor of the Library of America anthology Americans in Paris. He writes on various subjects for The New Yorker and has recently written introductions to works by Maupassant, Balzac, Proust, and Alain-Fournier.

A new translation by Julie Rose of Hugo s behemoth classic that is as racy and current and utterly arresting as it should be. The Buffalo News (editor s choice)

Lively, dramatic, and wonderfully readable. Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Foreign Affairs

Splendid . . . The magnificent story [is] marvelously captured in this new unabridged translation. Denver Post

Rich and gorgeous. This is the [translation] to read. . . . If you are flying, just carry it under your arm as you board, or better still, rebook your holiday and go by train, slowly, page by page. Jeanette Winterson, The Times, London