Les Miserables是十九世纪最著名的小说之一。全书以卓越的艺术表现力，通过对冉•阿让等人的悲惨遭遇以及冉•阿让被卞福汝主教感化后所做的一系列令人感动的事迹的描写。向人们展示了一幅自1793年法国大革命到1832年巴黎人民起义期间法国近代社会生活和政治生活的辉煌画卷。 小说集中反映了雨果的人道主义思想，饱含了雨果对于人类苦难命运的关心和未来坚定不移的信念，具有震撼人心的艺术感染力，被誉为“人类苦难的百科全书”和“人性向善的精神史诗”，是世界文学史上现实主义与浪漫主义相结合的典范。本书为《三个火枪手》的英文漫画版。

A monumental classic dedicated to the oppressed, the underdog, the laborer, the rebel, the orphan, and the misunderstood, Les Miserables is a rich, emotional novel that captures nothing less than the entirety of life in nineteenth-century France. Les Miserables is primarily a great humanitarian work that encourages compassion and hope in the face of adversity and injustice. It is also a historical novel of great scope, and provides a detailed vision of nineteenth-century French politics and society. Dramatic, packed with rich excitement and filled with the sweep and violence of human passions, Les Miserables is not only superb adventure but a powerful social document. The story of how the convict Jean-Valjean struggled to escape his past and reaffirm his humanity, in a world brutalized by poverty and ignorance, became the gospel of the poor and the oppressed. Beautifully illustrated, this classic tale will capture children's interest and spark their imagination inspiring a lifelong love of literature and reading.

雨果（1802―1885），出生于法国东部的贝藏松，他的父亲曾是拿破仑部下的将军。11岁时跟着母亲和两个哥哥返回巴黎，居住在一所古老的修道院里。雨果从小爱好文学，崇拜法国早期浪漫主义作家夏多布里昂。1827年雨果发表剧本《克伦威尔》及其《序言》，剧本因不符合舞台艺术的要求未能演出，但《序言》却成为当时浪漫主义运动的重要宣言，雨果本人亦因此而被公认为浪漫主义运动的领袖。雨果著述颇丰，主要作品有长篇小说《巴黎圣母院》、《悲惨世界》、《九三年》等。

Victor Hugo (1802-85) was the most forceful, prolific and versatile of French nineteenth-century writers. He wrote Romantic costume dramas, many volumes of lyrical and satirical verse, political and other journalism, criticism and several novels, the best known of which are Les Miserables (1862) and the youthful Notre-Dame de Paris (1831). A royalist and conservative as a young man, Hugo later became a committed social democrat and during the Second Empire of Napoleon III was exiled from France, living in the Channel Islands. He returned to Paris in 1870 and remained a great public figure until his death: his body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe before being buried in the Panthéon.