Victor Hugo, 19th century. Portrait of French author Victor Hugo (1802-1885) with characters from his novels and poems. Hugo was a central figure in the French Romantic movement. In 1848, the year of revolutions in Europe, he was elected to the Assembly as a Republican but after Napoleon III's coup d'etat he was sent into exile, living in Guernsey in the Channel Islands until 1870. His work includes "Notre Dame de Paris" (1831), "Les Miserables" (1862), "Les Travailleurs de la Mer" ("The Toilers of the Sea") (1866). Among his plays "La Roi s'amuse" (1832) was banned. In its guise as Verdi's opera "Rigoletto", it is universally popular.