Astonishing Things

Discover the imaginary worlds of Victor Hugo, one of France’s most famous writers, with his rarely-seen works on paper. Accompanied the major Victor Hugo exhibition at the Royal Academy, London, 21 March - 29 June 2025. The novelist, poet and politician, Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was a towering figure in French 19th-century public life. The author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame became a symbol of the French Republic’s ideals of equality and freedom during his long exile in the Channel Islands. His ink-and-wash visions of imaginary castles, monsters and seascapes may be less well known than his writings, but they inspired Romantic and Symbolist poets, and many artists, including the Surrealists; Vincent van Gogh compared them to ‘astonishing things’. This handsome book – the catalog of an exhibition organized by the Royal Academy of Arts in collaboration with Paris Musées – Maison de Victor Hugo and the Bibliothèque nationale de France – includes new texts by leading authorities on Hugo and reproductions of many of his finest works on paper, from early caricatures and travel drawings to dramatic landscapes and experiments in abstraction.