Les Miserables read-a-long 2026 | Première Partie (1)

[AgualusasL0ver]

Welcome to the first thread of the Les Miserables Read-a-long.

I'll be using the Christine Donougher translation for posting in the main, but it doesn't matter which translation you have, they seem to follow the same breakdown. I have not seen the film, the musical, and have very little knowledge about the book, but suspect I will be doing all of these Christmas 2026.

The only rules
The plan is to read ONE chapter a day and contribute/follow the thread as you see fit. There are c. 365 chapters, so we plan to take the year to read slowly and really get under the skin. Sometimes we have clustered chapters in past read-a-longs, and people do sometimes read ahead. All fine - but No spoilers until the relevant day.

Notes from previous read-a-longs

• How you manage one a day is entirely up to you, some people prefer to store them and read all the chapters for the week at once, some read each day.
• Sometimes these books can go off on a tangent all their own (looking at Mr Tolstoy), stick with it :-)
• All formats and translations welcome. Sometimes the translation discussions are some of the most interesting conversations.
• You WILL get behind at some point, but don't worry, just catch up when you can.
• Tangents, things you discovered down a rabbit hole, articles, pod casts, clips of epic scenes when we get to them all very welcome on the thread.

Spoiler free summary , courtesy of Chat GPT below. Schmoop has book summaries so I will post those at the relevant points.

**

Les Misérables is a classic novel by Victor Hugo that explores justice, compassion, and the struggle for dignity in 19th-century France.
At its core, the book follows the lives of several interconnected characters from different social classes as they navigate poverty, law, love, and moral choice. Rather than focusing on a single hero or plotline, the novel paints a wide picture of society—showing how personal decisions are shaped by systems like the legal system, economic inequality, and social expectations.
Key themes include:

• Justice vs. mercy — how laws affect people differently, and whether strict punishment leads to fairness
• Redemption and moral growth — the possibility of change, even after hardship
• Poverty and inequality — the daily realities of people living on the margins
• Love and sacrifice — care for others as a powerful force for good
• Social responsibility — how individual actions impact the wider community

The novel is known for:

• Deep character development
• Emotional intensity
• Philosophical reflections on society and humanity
• Detailed descriptions of history and everyday life

Overall, Les Misérables is less about a single storyline and more about asking big questions:
What does it mean to be a good person? How should society treat its most vulnerable? And can compassion change lives?

I enjoyed Chapter 2 - the Bishop seems like a Good Egg. I genuinely loved that he swapped his household with the hospital and that so much of his money went to maternity services (which I can only imagine were dire) and to get the 'jailed due to debt' father's out and back to supporting their families!

I don't know anything about the later story so am hoping he holds true as I like him - a lot. A rogue turned saintly - gotta love it!!

I notice “likelihood” is suggested as a translation of vraisemblance in literature. I like this as the concept suggested by the last line of chapter two.

Lots to think about!

I'm finding it more readable than I expected and enjoying it so far.
Also going in fairly cold to the plot. I can only remember one bit vaguely from the musical.
Thanks for all your observations

The last line of ch. 2 in my translation is 'We do not claim that the portrait which we present here is a true one; we say only that it resembles him.'

I’ve swapped to the Donougher version because it’s easier to keep track of the chapters. Very readable.

Fascinated by the list of names, seemingly real people. In sweeps our bishop and it's goodbye to its luxurious past of gold and marble and fancy French folk. He's turning the episcopal palace into a sanatorium, which reminds me of when Downton became a hospital during WW1 (high-brow literary reference). During his conversation with the hospital director, the bishop doesn't give much away until he comes up with the zinger of swapping houses. The director must have been stunned!

I didn't expect the book to begin with a claim for travel expenses. Our bishop could have used the Entitled To benefits calculator and joined Motability. The maid Madame Magloire, demonstrating the savvy of the working classes, was smart to share her knowledge, but still misses out on the bounty because our bishop is such a moral, charitable sort that he gives it all away. Feel a bit sorry for her! Meanwhile, his sister is highly deferential to her very good bro, and not much else.

The senator kicking up a fuss about the expenses claim supported Napoleon and ending the Revolution, which the bishop was forced to flee from. Rewarded handsomely with a fancy office. So even though they're on the same side(??), he's off ranting to the delightfully named Mr Bigot, a real historical figure, about the Bishop's travel expense requests. I feel the senator would be the kind of po-faced politico frothing himself into a lather by posting multi-paragraph ragebait on X. I enjoyed the part where he says screw religion and that he's all for Caesar - a bit of a disclaimer to appeal to the in-group. Hugo's "Etc, etc" made me laugh.

After all his good deeds, the gossipy town accepts their new generous benefactor. The bishop becomes Mr Welcome, which is certainly a superior name to Mr Bigot. He says it is better than Monseigneur, a title given to fancy folks, which shows his aversion to hierarchy.

Favourite line, and which will probably sum up the whole novel if the musical is anything to go by:

"There is always more wretchedness below than there is brotherhood above." 💔

I rather like M Bienvenu and his approach to spreading Christian values, not because they are Christian, but his pedagogical approach. I wonder though will he be found out for occasionally sharing falsehoods!

I have been looking at the last line of chapter two again. This discussion set me thinking.

Hugo puts this line last in the chapter for emphasis and a kind of disclaimer as the Bishop appears to be utterly perfect?

I think everything we know about the bishop before his time at Digne is based on hearsay and gossip but any doubts about him are cancelled out by the bishop’s nine years of charitable work.

However, all his charitable work is related as snippets of information that have a feeling of villagers relating details to each other. We end up with exaggeration typical of people relating details of the bishop’s good deeds.

Hugo feels bound to point out that the portrait of the Bishop is indeed implausible but there’s no smoke without fire!

The weight of so much information in the Bishop’s favour must prove his goodness. The other evidence to bear in mind is that his accounts do support the impression that he is a thoroughly good man.

‘Nous ne prétendons pas que le portrait que nous faisons ici soit vraisemblable nous nous bornons à dire qu’il est ressemblent.’

(Subjunctive ‘soit’ there to suggest doubt or uncertainty. Vraisemblable for plausible as discussed above).

So my stab at interpreting this would be:

We don’t claim that this portrayal of the Bishop is plausible, but for clarification we do state that it is true to life.

I have taken lots of liberties here (I am not a translator!!!) but I feel Hugo wants to underline his belief that reputation is very influential on a person’s destiny and that this is important to the story going forwards?

Sorry to get all pedantic but this was bugging me!

Obviously the real translators have been very accurate and know much better than me - but I still felt unsatisfied and wanted to approach the sense of the meaning because Hugo was quite formal and insistent that we know this!

I am glad that most of this book is very accessible to a reader like me (!) and the curved balls appear so far to be few and far between!

I’m enjoying the different takes on the translation, one of them seemed a much more comfortable fit than the “like as not” choice of Donagher, even if she was being historically en vogue!

My Kindle app just keeps crashing today. I’ll have to read ch3 tomorrow. :(

Hmmm... perhaps the tiger doesn't change his stripes so easily - telling fibs to his parishioners, whatever his reasons, seems a bit off to me! But he's still my favourite character 😉

Reading it in French, I took it to mean, « We don’t pretend that this portrait that we are making is realistic, we confine ourselves to saying that it resembles him. » Perhaps this was a kind of disclaimer because there was some fuss at the time from the relatives of the M Miollis it was based on? The town was D- in the first edition so as not to make it obvious that it was Digne.

Of course this can be read at many levels so we can also take it to signal mystery about the character and whether Hugo is indicating such a person could really be believable in real life.

Could you explain a bit more please SanFranBear? I’m not sure what you mean? 😊

I enjoyed yesterday’s chapter (was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I read it) and by the examples of the Bishop talking / preaching to those in his diocese.

My favourite quote was when he was being sneered at for riding a donkey (presumably because he was not riding a horse) and he quipped back that they must be shocked at him presuming to ride the same animal as Jesus. This makes sense as someone used to Versailles would have no difficulty dealing with a bit of provincial bourgeois snobbery.

Le maire de la ville vint le recevoir à la porte de l’êveché et le regardait descendre de son âne avec des yeux scandalisés. Quelque bourgeois riaient autour de lui. - Monsieur le maire, dit l’évêque, et messieurs les bourgeois, je vois ce qui vous scandalise; vous trouvez que c’est bien de l’orgueil à un pauvre prêtre de monter une monture qui était celle de Jésus-Christ.

No wonder this is a long book! 😁 But no genuinely enjoying the descriptions of the Bishop. The Ch. 4 descriptions of the guillotine are sobering and I think probably quite true.

Mgr Emmanuel Gobilliard, modern day Bishop of Digne has suggested the beatification of the real life character Mgr de Miollis who was Hugo’s inspiration for Mgr Myriel. (Beatification being the first stage necessary to be made a saint).

From église.catholique.fr

"Mgr Myriel, the bishop from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, was a real person. His name was Mgr de Miollis, and this kind, generous man, close to the poorest, could be beatified! Let us pray for this and mobilize the diocese of Digne so that this wonderful pastor may inspire us and watch over the inhabitants of his diocese”
Mgr Emmanuel Gobilliard Bishop of Digne

(Mgr Myriel, l’évêque des misérables de Victor Hugo a vraiment existé. Il s’appelait Mgr de Miollis et cet homme bon, généreux, proche des plus pauvres pourrait être béatifié ! Prions pour cela et mobilisons le diocèse de Digne pour que ce pasteur merveilleux nous inspire et veille sur les habitants de son diocèse
Mgr Emmanuel Gobilliard, évêque de Digne)

I presume Hugo had witnessed an execution? I know nothing about him really.
Dickens certainly saw a public execution and was sickened.

Ah, yes, AI 'reliably' informs me he witnessed executions as a child and went on to campaign against the guillotine.

This contemporary engraving allows us to imagine what these traveling schoolteachers might have looked like.

(Cette gravure contemporaine nous permet d'imaginer à quoi pouvait ressembler ces instituteurs ambulants)

Travelling schoolteacher

Gah copy and paste fail ! 😩

The description of the guillotine was very sobering - the impact it has on the Bishop afterwards is clear and yet he overcame his horror to offer comfort to the condemned man.
Was Hugo against capital punishment?

https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/decouvrir-l-assemblee/histoire/grands-discours-parlementaires/victor-hugo-15-septembre-1848

Hugo spoke out against the death penalty in the National Assembly and wrote a book condemning the practice.

“The death penalty is the special and eternal sign of barbarism. Everywhere the death penalty is lavished, barbarism dominates; everywhere the death penalty is rare, civilization reigns. These are incontestable facts".

He believed death should be for God alone, not Man to decide.

Bonjour, Fellow Readers. Back to work a little more intensely tomorrow, so I thought I would post reading for the week for you to refer back to. It is straightforward right now given the chapter number = the day, but this will change.

If this is too spoilery with the chapter titles I can just put Part/Book/Chapter.

Monday 5 January: Chapter 5, Monseigneur Bienvenu Made His Cassocks Last Far Too Long (c. 2.5 pages)

Tuesday 6 January: Chapter 6, Under Whose Protection He Placed His House (c.4.5 pages)

Wednesday 7 January: Chapter 7, Cravatte (c. 3 pages)

Thursday 8 January: Chapter 8, After-Drinking Philosophy (c. 3 pages)

Friday 9 January: Chapter 9, The Brother Described by His Sister (c.3 pages)

Saturday 10 January: Chapter 10, The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light (c. 10 pages)

Sunday 11 January: Chapter 11, One Reservation (c. 3.5 pages)

Thank you so much AgualusasLOver!