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Victor Hugo was one of the most prolific French authors of his day whose influence is felt even today. His most famous works include the novels The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the immensely popular Les Miserables, which of course served as inspiration for one of the twentieth century’s most popular musicals Les Mis; however, it is his dramatic works, rather than his novels, that incited so much animosity, praise, and even riots. Victor Hugo’s fame as a playwright grew out of the riots surrounding the opening performance of his play Hernani. It is through this dramatic work and the preface to his earlier unstageable play Cromwell, which the manifesto of the French Romantic Revolution was born. Victor Hugo was born February 26th, 1802, in Besancon, where his father was commandant of the local garrison. He gained early notoriety for his poems, and before he was thirty years old, he had published numerous works, and his name famous. Hugo did not limit himself to one style of writing, he wrote odes and ballads, romances, and, of course, dramas. Shortly before the French revolution of 1830, a literary revolution took place, at the head of which was Hugo. In 1827, Hugo published Cromwell, a long, unstageable, historical drama. T