Victor Hugo à quatre sous. L'édition populaire illustrée des œuvres complètes de Victor Hugo

The agreement which Victor Hugo signed on 8 June 1852 with Pierre-Jules Hetzel and the firm of Marescq for a popular illustrated edition of his complete works is a turning point in the publishing history of his output. It is certainly characteristic of a development in French publishing which had been in progress for some years, and for Victor Hugo it was important to secure additional income at the beginning of his exile, but this edition marks above all the first contact between a genuinely popular readership and the literary defender of the Republic. Hugo's immediate circle - Paul Meurice and the Hugo family - expected great things from this encounter ; they hoped that the success of the edition would indicate widespread opposition to the new regime. The publishers, who were very active in the area of popular illustrated editions, were less sanguine. They offered Victor Hugo the usual financial arrangements for this kind of edition, but they did not undertake to publish his entire work. The publication had the same production quality as other popular illustrated editions, and Hetzel was especially painstaking in his choice of illustrators. All practical matters were dealt with in Paris by Paul Meurice and Marescq. However the publishers did not want to give great publicity to the edition, and it was Meurice who had to go to some trouble to get a few journalist friends to raise public interest in its appearance. The results were less good than had been hoped for. After a promising start due to the appearance of Notre-Dame de Paris and of the plays, sales fell off little by little. All the same the publishers pushed the edition through to a conclusion, though the appearance of each successive volume was more and more spread out. As for revenue, though not trivial, it fell below the expectations of the various parties. One cannot really speak of a publishing success. However the edition did allow certain journalists to publicise Victor Hugo's thinking in a press wh