[5] Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, particularly the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption.

Upton Sinclair described the novel as "one of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world" and remarked that Hugo set forth the purpose of Les Misérables in the preface:[7] So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.Towards the end of the novel, Hugo explains the work's overarching structure:[8] The book which the reader has before him at this moment is, from one end to the other, in its entirety and details ... a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God.

The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end.The novel contains various subplots, but the main thread is the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean, who becomes a force for good in the world but cannot escape his criminal past.

Wherever men go in ignorance or despair, wherever women sell themselves for bread, wherever children lack a book to learn from or a warm hearth, Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: "open up, I am here for you".More than a quarter of the novel—by one count 955 of 2,783 pages—is devoted to essays that argue a moral point or display Hugo's encyclopedic knowledge but do not advance the plot, nor even a subplot, a method Hugo used in such other works as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Toilers of the Sea.

The fact that this "digression" occupies such a large part of the text demands that it be read in the context of the "overarching structure" discussed above.

Waterloo, by cutting short the demolition of European thrones by the sword, had no other effect than to cause the revolutionary work to be continued in another direction.

[13] Even when not turning to other subjects outside his narrative, Hugo sometimes interrupts the straightforward recitation of events, his voice and control of the storyline unconstrained by time and sequence.

Vidocq also inspired Hugo's "Claude Gueux" and Le Dernier jour d'un condamné (The Last Day of a Condemned Man).

[19] Hugo had used the departure of prisoners from the Bagne of Toulon in one of his early stories, Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné.

[21] On 22 February 1846, when he had begun work on the novel, Hugo witnessed the arrest of a bread thief while a duchess and her child watched the scene pitilessly from their coach.

For instance, Marius and Cosette's wedding night (Part V, Book 6, Chapter 1) takes place on 16 February 1833, which is also the date when Hugo and his lifelong mistress Juliette Drouet made love for the first time.

In 1815 Digne, the peasant Jean Valjean, just released from 19 years' imprisonment in the Bagne of Toulon—five for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family and fourteen more for numerous escape attempts—is turned away by innkeepers because his yellow passport marks him as a former convict.

Fantine is unaware that they are abusing her daughter and using her as forced labor for their inn and continues to try to meet their growing, extortionate, and fictitious demands.

He orders a meal and observes how the Thénardiers abuse her while pampering their own daughters, Éponine and Azelma, who mistreat Cosette for playing with their doll.

Lamarque was a victim of a major cholera epidemic that had ravaged the city, particularly its poor neighborhoods, arousing suspicion that the government had been poisoning wells.

The Friends of the ABC are joined by the poor of the Cour des miracles, including the Thénardiers' eldest son, Gavroche, who is a street urchin.

After the death of his father, Colonel Georges Pontmercy, Marius discovers a note from him instructing his son to provide help to a sergeant named Thénardier who saved his life at Waterloo—in reality, Thénardier was looting corpses and only saved Pontmercy's life by accident; he had called himself a sergeant under Napoleon to avoid exposing himself as a robber.

He arrests all the Thénardiers and Patron-Minette (except Claquesous, who escapes during his transportation to prison, and Montparnasse, who stops to run off with Éponine instead of joining in on the robbery).

Valjean, learning that Cosette's lover is fighting, is at first relieved, but an hour later, he puts on a National Guard uniform, arms himself with a gun and ammunition, and leaves his home.

As their wedding party winds through Paris during Mardi Gras festivities, Valjean is spotted by Thénardier, who then orders Azelma to follow him.

He introduces his recounting of Waterloo with several paragraphs describing the narrator's recent approach to the battlefield: "Last year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person who is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles ..."[30] The narrator describes how "[a]n observer, a dreamer, the author of this book" during the 1832 street fighting was caught in the crossfire: "All that he had to protect him from the bullets was the swell of the two half columns which separate the shops; he remained in this delicate situation for nearly half an hour."

At one point, he apologizes for intruding—"The author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning himself"—to ask the reader's understanding when he describes "the Paris of his youth ... as though it still existed".

This introduces a meditation on memories of past places that his contemporary readers would recognize as a self-portrait written from exile: "You have left a part of your heart, of your blood, of your soul, in those pavements."

The appearance of the novel was a highly anticipated event, as Victor Hugo was considered one of France's foremost poets in the middle of the nineteenth century.

[32] A massive advertising campaign[33] preceded the release of the first two volumes of Les Misérables in Brussels on 30 or 31 March and in Paris on 3 April 1862.

Some critics found the subject matter immoral, others complained of its excessive sentimentality, and others were disquieted by its apparent sympathy with the revolutionaries.

L. Gauthier wrote in Le Monde on 17 August 1862, "One cannot read without an unconquerable disgust all the details Monsieur Hugo gives regarding the successful planning of riots.

[37] In a newspaper review, Charles Baudelaire praised Hugo's success in focusing public attention on social problems, though he believed that such propaganda was the opposite of art.

[40][41] Translated the same year it appeared into several foreign languages, including Italian, Greek, and Portuguese, it proved popular not only in France but across Europe and abroad.

Since its original publication, Les Misérables has been the subject of a large number of adaptations in numerous types of media, such as books, films, musicals, plays and games.