Les Miserables (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Norman Denny (Translator, Introduction) "IN THE year 1815 Monseigneur Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne..." (more)
Key Phrases: jondrette woman, ring sewer, sixteen sous, Monsieur Gillenormand, Monsieur Madeleine, Monsieur Leblanc (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The book is in excellent condition.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1232 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; 40th edition (April 29, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140444300
• ISBN-13: 978-0140444308
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #486,131 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Norman Denny Translation is Readable, July 2, 2006

By	R. Hill (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have both the original Wilbour translation and the Norman Denny translation of this book, and I'd say that the Denny translation is the more readable of the two. Graham Robb, in his award-winning biography of Hugo has called Denny's translation "swiss cheese" and "translation as censorship." However, it's well-written, and the "excised" sections are included as appendices to which any reader can turn. In places where Denny edits the prose, he captures the spirit of the novel.

But the best comparison is made by reading:
here's Wilbour from the beginning of Part Two, Book Four:

"Forty years ago, the solitary pedestrian who ventured into the unknown region of La Salpetriere and went up along the Boulevard as far as the Barrier d'italie, reached certain points where it might be said that Paris had disappeared. It was no longer a solitude, for there were people passing; it was not the country for there were houses and streets. It was not a city, the streets had ruts in them, like highways, and grass grew along their borders; it was not a village, the houses were too lofty. What was it then? It was an inhabited place where there was nobody. It was a desert place where there was somebody. It was a boulevard of the great city, a street of Paris, wilder at night than a forest and gloomier by day than a graveyard. It was the old quarter of the horse-market."

Denny's version of the same passage
" A stroller forty years ago penetrating beyond the Salpetriere by way of the Boulevard de l'Hopital as far as the Barrierr d'italie, would have come to a region where Paris seemed to disappear. It was not a wilderness, for there were inhabitants; not country, for there were streets and houses; not a town, for the streets were rutted like country roads, and grass grew in them; nor was it a village, for the houses were too high. What was it then? It was an inhabited place where there was no one, a deserted place where there was someone, a city boulevard, a paris street, wilder by night than the forest, more melancholy by day than a graveyard. It was the anciet quarter of the horse-market, the Marche-Aux-Chevaux."

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hugo - The Real Master of the House, May 23, 2000

By	Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

I'm glad to see so many young people drawn to the book via the musical or the movie versions. If there were one writer I would want to know on a personal basis via his work it would have been Victor Hugo. He must have had an enormously generous heart and spirit as evidenced by his writing. This is probably the most sympathetic, almost God-like perspective of humanity that I have ever come across in literature. And what a sweeping cyclorama Hugo portrays. From the fields of Waterloo to the sewers of Paris, Hugo's eye of god sees everything. The Waterloo passages are often discarded in the abridgements, but to me they play an important part in allowing the reader to pull back and look at things from this god-like point-of-view. The great panoramic macrocosm of history is seen in conjunction with the vivid details of Jean Valjean's microcosmic struggle. Of course the characters, which I thought were rather cleverly encapsulated in the musical, are here given their true range and scope. That Hugo loved these characters is abundantly clear. This love is absorbed by the reader. Every time Jabert comes close to capturing Jean, it is as if we were in Jean's shoes. Hugo far outshines Dickens in his depiction of lower class existence in a 19th century European city. His Paris is inhabited by much more convincing urchins. All his characters in fact, are much more believable. Dickens is much more overtly sentimental. Hugo lets the story affect the reader. There is no sense of straining to convey an effect. With Dickens, I am always aware of the puppetmaster straining to get a point across. He is a polemical writer compared to Hugo. He relies on heavy-handed bathos. Hugo remains much more in the background and we are left essentially unaware of his machinations. That's why, for me, I respond more viscerally to Hugo as I respond more depply to great art in general. My primary appeal to readers is that they don't do Hugo the disservice of reading an abridged version of this novel. You may not be all that interested in the causes behind the rebellion that led to Marius's mounting of the barricade, but I assure you you will not be bored by the lengthier version. Great writers don't waste their time on superfluous details. Every word is there for a reason. Let the Master of the House display his wares in full.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tale of lives intertwined by the workings of God., June 15, 2003

By	miked99 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" is a classic tale set in early-19th Century Paris, in which the lives of several colorful characters cross paths, seemingly randomly, and are each changed dramatically from contact with these others. "Les Miserables" is a short glimpse at how people's actions have direct results on the lives of others, and how God works in these actions for the ultimate good.

The novel begins by introducing us to the life of the elderly priest, Monseigneur Bienvenu, an utterly humble and Christ-like man who gives everything he has, including his heart and spirit, to the people he comes in contact with, yet doing it all in testimony to the grace of Jesus Christ. Bienvenu's spirit is what allows him to change the heart of the hardened criminal, Jean Valjean. Valjean, so impressed by the grace shown to him by Bienvenu, embarks on a life of repentance and noble actions. In time, he crosses paths with Fantine, the single mother of Cosette, whom Fantine has had to place in custody of the Thenardier family, being unable to care for Cosette herself. It is out of desperation (a state initially brought upon herself by her own poor choices) that Fantine is forced to leave her daughter with the Thenardiers who, unbeknownst to Fantine, are thoroughly evil people. As Hugo puts it: "There are human creatures which, like crayfish, always retreat into shadow, going backwards rather than forwards through life, gaining in deformity with experience, going from bad to worse and sinking into even deeper darkness. The Thenardiers were of this kind."

Out of kindness to Fantine, Valjean sets out to rescue Cosette from the slavery which she has been left to. But by this time, Valjean is being tracked by the cold, legalistic, Javert, an inspector seeking to arrest Valjean for parole violations stemming from the crimes of his earlier days. This sets up a novel of lives on courses that cross with dozens more, with countless twists and turns of the roads on which each character is travelling. What the reader encounters is a fascinating example of how simple meetings of "chance" can often lead to radical re-workings of one's entire outlook on the world and the people around him; of the ways in which these events and introductions can entirely alter how one's life plays out. Ultimately, it is a story that presents numerous challenging questions concerning God, grace, and predestination, or in other words, our sovereignty... or His: "He could see two ways ahead of him, and this appaled him, because hitherto he had never seen more than one straight line. And the paths led in opposite directions. One ruled out the other. Which was the true one?"