Les Miserables came out in 1862 and was received well by the public, but not kindly by many influential critics. Hugo's fame in France still rests mainly as a poet, although in England and America he is better known for his 2 novels. Les Miserables starts with a quote that ends "..so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this". Les Miserables is a wakeup call to the conscience of society, and a call to action by those who have the power to effect change.

Anyone who intends to read an abridged version of Les Miserables should save their money, and their time, and just see the theatrical production or one of the filmed versions. If you insist on doing it, you will be doing Victor Hugo a grave disservice. I understand that the complete version is almost 1500 pages long, and that the central story , with such marvelous characters, and high morals, can stand on it's own. Many have a problem with the digressions, and fault Hugo for creating a monstrosity where a streamlined narrative would have sufficed. But Hugo intended this work to be more than a simple moral tale, and Valjean, Javert, Cosette, and Marius are part of a much greater plot, and occupy a much larger canvas. The story doesn't require a detailed retelling of Waterloo, and post Napoleonic French history, or a history of French convents and the Paris sewers, or an explanation of argot (underworld street lingo), and Paris class structure, but the intimate knowledge of these things help us understand why characters are the way they are, and act the way they do, and force us to confront the reality behind the fiction, giving it the quality of an epic, a legend, even a myth, but a myth peopled with real flesh and blood characters, not cartoons or stick figures. Even the secondary characters, like Fantine, Thenardier, Gavroche, Eponine, Enjolras, and the student rebels, have their stories fleshed out instead of curtailed or eliminated. Each can be main subjects of their own novels. It is such a rich tapestry.

This is the version to read. The complete Les Miserables is one of the most powerful novels ever written. Tears came to my eyes at it's conclusion, and I was quite literally overwhelmed by Hugo's masterwork.