Referring to maps from the era and often paraphrasing historical accounts, he depicted in myriad details the streets and quarters of 15th-century Paris, as well as the socio-religious life of the time, in a sweeping novel enriched by boundless descriptions. As such, two years went by before he finally set about drafting Notre-Dame de Paris, which he broached from the perspective of a historian advocating against improvements to Paris’ timeless monuments. Enticed by the offer of reissuing previous works and of future publications, Hugo hastened to accept but balked at complying his time was already consumed by more ambitious projects: his play Hernani, his novel Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné and his collection of poems Les Orientales. Thus, beginning in 1828, the publisher Gosselin commissioned a historical saga from a successful young writer, Victor Hugo, to be set in Paris at the time of Louis XI. It followed a trend in France for historical novels inspired by the popular Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward of Sir Walter Scott. Above the flame, the enormous towers, two sides of each of which were visible in sharp outline, the one wholly black, the other wholly red, seemed still more vast with all the immensity of the shadow which they cast even to the sky.The first edition of Notre-Dame de Paris appeared in 1831, titled Notre-Dame de Paris.

Below that fire, below the gloomy balustrade with its trefoils showing darkly against its glare, two spouts with monster throats were vomiting forth unceasingly that burning rain, whose silvery stream stood out against the shadows of the lower façade.Īs they approached the earth, these two jets of liquid lead spread out in sheaves, like water springing from the thousand holes of a watering-pot. On the crest of the highest gallery, higher than the central rose window, there was a great flame rising between the two towers with whirlwinds of sparks, a vast, disordered, and furious flame, a tongue of which was borne into the smoke by the wind, from time to time. They beheld there an extraordinary sight. 'All eyes were raised to the top of the church.

In the novel, Hugo, one of France's most acclaimed writers, describes flames in the Cathedral when Quasimodo uses fire and stones to attack Truands in order to save Esmerelda.

Notre dame de paris 1482 victor hugo