Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, Washington Square Press Paperback, Wilbour Translation Abridged by Paul Bénichou, Tenth Printing, 1977

The Piece

A thick paperback with a cover that has aged into something better than it started as. The ground is a printed speckled cream, the sort of faux-recycled stock the 1970s used to signal seriousness, and against it the author's name and title are set in a tall condensed serif in deep blue.

Below the type sits the whole argument of the book in one image: a wood-engraved figure of a man in shirtsleeves and work trousers, stooped, hands clasped over the top of a stick, head down. No background, no scene, nothing but the figure and his shadow. It is Jean Valjean drawn as a labourer rather than a hero.

The spine and back carry the same cream ground, the back given over entirely to a description of the novel set in a classical serif. The Pocket Books kangaroo colophon sits at the lower right of the front with the price beneath it.

Inside, the paper has toned evenly to warm cream. The title page is set in an open, well-spaced style with fine triple rules above and below.

History & Provenance

This copy dates itself to the month, which is rare in a paperback.

The copyright page states: Washington Square Press edition published November, 1964; tenth printing, May, 1977. Copyright © 1964 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Published by Pocket Books, a Simon & Schuster Division of Gulf & Western Corporation, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York. ISBN 0-671-48830-9. Printed in the U.S.A. The cover carries the Pocket number 48830 and a price of $1.95.

So: the text setting is from 1964, and this physical copy was printed in May 1977. Not an estimate, not a range — the book says so.

The translation is worth knowing about. Charles E. Wilbour's English version appeared in 1862, the same year Hugo published the novel in French, which makes it the oldest English translation still in general circulation. It reads closer to nineteenth-century English prose than any modern rendering, because it is nineteenth-century English prose. The abridgement and introduction are by Paul Bénichou, the French literary historian.

Two things stated plainly. First, this edition is abridged. Hugo's complete novel runs well past a thousand pages and includes the long essayistic digressions on Waterloo, the Paris sewers, convent life and argot; Bénichou's edition cuts. If you want every word, this is not the copy for that, and we would rather you knew before you clicked than after it arrived. Second, this is a tenth printing of a mass-market paperback. It is a reading copy and a display object, not a scarce edition.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

The cover is the reason to own this particular copy. Cream and deep blue with a single wood-engraved figure is restrained in a way that paperback design almost never is, and it reads as a print rather than as packaging. Stood face-out on a shelf or leaned against a lamp it looks like something chosen, not something left over.

It is also the most approachable way into a novel most people mean to read and never do. Abridged is a fair trade when the alternative is unread, and Wilbour's Victorian English carries the register of the thing — the melodrama, the moral weight, the sheer forward drive — better than a tidied modern translation does.

And it is a small, cheap, genuinely good gift. Anyone who knows the musical and has never read the book, anyone working through the nineteenth century, anyone who likes an old paperback with real design on it.

A note on care: this is 1970s mass-market paper, acidic by construction, and it will continue to brown. Keep it out of direct sun, which fades cover ink and yellows page edges faster than anything else. Shelve it upright rather than buried under a stack, since sustained pressure sets fresh creases into a soft cover. Never use liquid on the cover; the ink sits on a coated surface and will lift. An archival polypropylene sleeve costs almost nothing and will slow the toning considerably.