Notre-Dame de Paris

Victor Hugo's celebrated 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris tells the story of Quasimodo, a disfigured orphan raised by the archdeacon of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. Hugo's novel became an important influence on many artists and helped to define a poetic view of the medieval period and of Gothic architecture that lasted well into the second half of the century. This drawing by Luc-Olivier Merson was reproduced as a wood engraving in an illustrated tribute to Hugo published in 1881.