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Napoleon le Petit (French; literally "Napoleon the Small") was an influential political pamphlet by Victor Hugo, published in 1852. It criticised the rule of Napoleon III and the politics of the Second French Empire for which he left Belgium, and later was expelled of Jersey. Hugo lived in exile in Guernsey for most of Napoleon III's reign and his criticism was significant because he was one of the most prominent Frenchmen of the time and widely respected.
The work was the first to use the adage that 2 + 2 = 5 as a denial of truth by authority, a notion later used by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Volumes were smuggled into France (e.g. in bales of hay, and between metal sheets as a tin of sardines), read at secret meetings, and hand-copied.
About the Author
Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 - 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms.
His most famous works are the novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Miserables (1862). In France, Hugo is renowned for his poetry collections, such as Les Contemplations and La Legende des siecles (The Legend of the Ages). Hugo was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani. His works have inspired music, both during his lifetime and after his death, including the opera Rigoletto and the musicals Les Miserables and Notre-Dame de Paris. He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment and slavery.
Although he was a committed royalist when young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed, and he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, serving in politics as both deputy and senator. His work touched upon most of the political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time. His opposition to absolutism, and his literary stature, established him as a national hero. Hugo died on 22 May 1885, aged 83. He was given a state funeral in the Pantheon of Paris, which was attended by over two million people, the largest in French history. (wikipedia.org)
