EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS
FICTION

HUGO’S TOILERS OF THE SEA

NOW NEWLY COMPLETED FROM
W. MOY THOMAS’S TRANSLATION
INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST RHYS

THIS IS NO. 509 OF EVERYMAN’S
LIBRARY
. THE PUBLISHERS WILL
BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TO ALL
APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED
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THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
HISTORY · CLASSICAL
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
ESSAYS · ORATORY
POETRY & DRAMA
BIOGRAPHY
REFERENCE
ROMANCE
THE ORDINARY EDITION IS BOUND
IN CLOTH WITH GILT DESIGN AND
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LIBRARY EDITION IN REINFORCED CLOTH
J.M. DENT & SONS LTD. ALDINE HOUSE, BEDFORD STREET, LONDON. W.C.2 E.P. DUTTON & CO. 681 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

First Issue of this Edition 1911
Reprinted 1913, 1917, 1920, 1928
Printed in Great Britain


INTRODUCTION

Victor Hugo was thinking much of Æschylus and his Prometheus at the time he conceived the figure of Gilliatt, heroic warrer with the elements. But it is to a creature of the Gothic mind like Byron’s Manfred, and not to any earlier, or classic, type of the eternal rebellion against fate or time or circumstance, that Hugo’s readers will be tempted to turn for the fellow to his Guernsey hero: