The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and The War Trail

5b Victor Hugo. London: Thomas Hodgson, 1856. The War Trail or the Hunt of the Wild Horse by Captain Maybe Reid. London: J. and C. Brown and Co.  Notes The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831) is a historical novel by Victor Hugo, set in 15th-century Paris. At its heart is Quasimodo, the deformed and kind-hearted bell-ringer of Notre-Dame Cathedral, who becomes tragically entangled in the life of the beautiful Romani dancer Esmeralda. The novel weaves together the fates of multiple characters—Quasimodo, Esmeralda, the cruel archdeacon Claude Frollo, and the shallow soldier Phoebus—into a story about love, obsession, cruelty, and justice. Hugo uses these intertwined lives to explore themes of social outcasts, moral hypocrisy, and the destructive power of unrequited passion. Beyond its story, the novel was also a call to preserve Gothic architecture, which was falling into neglect in Hugo’s time. His vivid descriptions of Notre-Dame Cathedral helped spark a movement to res