VICTOR HUGO (1802-1885), poet, novelist, and dramatist, the central figure of the Romantic movement in France. Coming late to active political life, he was elected to the Assembly in 1848, but spent the years 1851-1870 in exile, the greater part of the time in Guernsey. He returned to Paris in 1870 and was again chosen as a deputy, later becoming a senator of the Third Republic. He had been elected to the Académie française in 1841. Hugo is one of the masters of French poetry, to which he brought a new freedom of subject, diction, and versification. Hugo wrote a number of well-known novels: "Notre-Dame de Paris", "Les Misérables", "Les Travailleurs de la mer » and « « Quatre-vingt-treize ».