The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Rejected by fifteenth-century Parisian society, the hideously deformed bell-ringer Quasimodo believes he is safe under the watchful eye of his master, the Archdeacon Claude Frollo. But after Quasimodo saves the beautiful Romani girl Esmeralda from the gallows and brings her to sanctuary in the cathedral, he and Frollo's mutual desire for her puts them increasingly at odds, before compassion and cruelty clash with tragic results.

An emotionally stirring story, Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is rightfully considered to be one of the finest novels ever written, and this beautiful edition, featuring an afterword by John Grant, is the perfect way to experience this unforgettable tale.

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is one of the most well-regarded French writers of the nineteenth century. He was a poet, novelist and dramatist, and he is best remembered in English as the author of Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).

Hugo was born in Besançon, and became a pivotal figure of the Romantic movement in France, involved in both literature and politics. He founded the literary magazine Conservateur Littéraire in 1819, aged just seventeen, and turned his hand to writing political verse and drama after the accession to the throne of Louis-Philippe in 1830. His literary output was curtailed following the death of his daughter in 1843, but he began a new novel as an outlet for his grief. Completed many years later, this novel became Hugo's most notable work, Les Misérables.