Friday, December 20, 2013

Worth a Thousand Words: Cosette

Portrait of "Cosette" by Émile Bayard,
from the original edition of Les Misérables (1862).
Via Wikipedia
I have begun reading Les Miserables. Inspired by yesterday's portrait of Tolstoy, I went looking for portraits of Victor Hugo and found this along the way. I was so surprised to see that what I thought was a modern image of Cosette actually had been with the novel from the beginning. As Wikipedia tells us:
French illustrator Émile Bayard drew the sketch of Cosette for the first edition, and this engraving was prepared for an 1886 edition. The image has become emblematic of the entire story, being used in promotional art for various versions of the musical.

1 comment:

  1. I'm surprised too. I'm going to read the novel in the coming year myself. Actually what I'm going to do is since it's such a long novel and it would take me a good part of the year to read it, I'm going to read one part each year and since it's broken into five parts it will take me five years. Each part looks about 300 pages each. Part one is "Fantine."

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