Short Fiction Hugo, Victor: The Last Day of a Condemned man, v1, 11 June 2016

[AlexBell]

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a French poet, dramatist, artist, and social activist who wrote many short stories and novels. He was a Royalist in early life and then a Republican, and spent many years in exile before his return to Paris. After his death his body was laid in state under the Arc de Triomphe and was buried in the Pantheon.

The Last Day of a Condemned Man was his third prose book, and was first published in 1829. The first edition was composed of a short satirical play and a longer first person account of the last six weeks of a man sentenced to death by the guillotine. A passionate attack on the the use of the death penalty was added as a preface in the third (1832) edition, and an 1895 English edition omitted the play.

The text used for this ebook was taken from www.angelfire.com. As in the Delphi Classics version I have omitted the play and the words to a song. I have collected footnotes as end notes, silently corrected many typos, curled quotes, used British English, and made changes to spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com. The cover and illustration were taken from Wikipedia.

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[HarryT]

Alex, are you sure about that "angelfire.com" link? It takes me to a web hosting service.

[AlexBell]

Sorry, the full URL is

http://www.angelfire.com/mn3/mixed_lit/vh-cm-wjb.htm