![]() ![]() Notre-Dame de Paris was intended to reinvigorate the general public’s attachment to the cathedral. In 1825, Hugo had already expressed his view on the importance of preserving French heritage (see Sur la destruction des monuments en France). Highly influenced by the English Gothic, and infatuated with the historical novel as well as the Medieval period, it was during this fruitful decade that Victor Hugo set out to write his very first masterpiece: Notre-Dame de Paris. It signalled the beginning of a long and rich career at the forefront of French Romanticism, characterised by the scandalous reception of his play Hernani (1830). His first poetry collection Odes was published in 1822, the same year he married his childhood friend Adèle Foucher. ![]() ![]() Soon afterwards, he began to rub shoulders with leading Romantic minds of the time, including Alfred de Vigny, Lamartine, Charles Nodier, and founded the literary circle Le Cénacle. Encouraged by his mother, at 15 he took part in a poetry competition organised by the Académie Française on the theme ‘Happiness as dependent on study in all aspects of living’. An early career before Notre-Dame de Parisįrom the age of 14, Hugo wanted to be ‘Chateaubriand or nothing.’ He created a literary periodical with his brothers ( Le Conservateur littéraire) and wrote poems while he was a student at the Cordier boarding school in Paris. ![]()
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