Utopias Travel Underground – by Victor Hugo

Before he became an icon of French literary culture, Victor Hugo (1802–1885) made his debut as the figurehead of the controversial & revolutionary Romanticist movement; the young writers who formed the first self-consciously “’avant-garde” cultural communities were inspired –– arguably obsessed –– with his aggressively idiosyncratic and groundbreaking work in verse, theatre, fiction, cultural theory, and the integration of historical research and sociopolitical engagement into literature. Even later in his career, when his massive influence permeated European culture, Hugo remained a vigorous rallying-point against Authoritarianism, and maintained meaningful ties with the network of underground countercultures where he’d spent his youth. This short, detachable passage from his sprawling epic saga Les Misérables stands alone as both an example of Hugo’s experimental melding of poetic, fictional, and nonfictional literary forms, and as a tribute and sociological analysis of the ongoing system of countercultures which we often refer to today as the Lunatic Fringe or Eternal Network.

Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood 
Image by John R. Niell

6 pgs on folded letter. June A.Da. 110 (2026 Anti-Vulgar)
$0.75 + s/h

Packed along with a few other free pamphlets from this series tossed in! (Specify other titles in a note with the order, if you have a preference.)