"The Last Day of a Condemned Man and Other Prison Writings (World's Classics)

by VictorHugo (Author), Geoff Woollen (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $3.27

  Victor Hugo, the shining light of French Romanticism, was an indefatigable campaigner against the death penalty. This unique anthology of his controversial writings on crime and punishment reveals the author's generosity of spirit and his pity for the condemned. However, as always in Hugo, a degree of endearing self-glorification is never absent. The Last Day of a Condemned Man, while not seeking to minimalize its protagonist's responsibility for the murder he has committed, reminds the reader of the mental anguish endured by a man condemned to a cell. Claude Gueux is a documentary account of the martyrdom of a prisoner driven to crime by poverty, and to murder by the casual brutality of a head warder. Also included are Hugo's moving diary entries recording his visits to the prisons of La Roquette and the Conciergerie.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.27

  A detailed, first-person chronicle of the final hours of a man sentenced to the gallows, 'The Last Day of a Condemned Man' provides at once graphic details of the prisoner's environment and a moving insight into his thoughts, reminiscences and despair at his impending doom.

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $11.62