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The great French author Victor Hugo was a passionate Republican and his epic novels highlight the social and political injustices of his time. When Napoleon III seized power in 1851, Hugo declared him a traitor. He lived in exile in Guernsey until the fall of the Second Empire in 1870, returning to Paris as the hostilities of the Franco-Prussian War were escalating Hugo was unwilling to sit and pose for his portrait so Rodin worked from quick sketches. The artist stated, 'I thought I had seen a French Jupiter; when I knew him better he seemed more like Hercules'. The bust conveys the dignified status of this great author and French national hero, who wrote epics such as 'Les Miserables' and 'Notre-Dame de Paris'. Sir William Goscombe John described it as 'about his finest in that genre and celebrated the world over. It is a splendidly honest work'.