Victor Hugo's poetry is praised as highly as, if not higher than, his prose by the French; however, finding translations of his poetry in English is a challenge. All English translations are presently out of print. In April 2001, this changed with the publication of a new translation of selected poems ("Selected Poems of Victor Hugo: A Bilingual Edition" Translated by EH and AM Blackmore. University of Chicago Press. ) This translation of course is under copyright, so none of it can be entered here.

Through the aid of an auction site I have however found several older volumes of poetry. These translations date back to the late 19th century.

I intend to type in a lot of the poetry here, as my limited time permits. There is no copyright date on the books, nor does the name of the translator appear anywhere, but the publisher was Estes and Lauriat, which existed between 1872 and 1898. The volumes included a total of 37 illustrations, which have been scanned in.

The volumes of poetry do not comprise Hugo's complete poetic works by any means. Only selected pieces. For example, the complete Les Chatiments contains 97 poems. Only 25 appear in this collection.