The Project Gutenberg EBook of Toilers of the Sea, by Victor Hugo

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Title: Toilers of the Sea

Author: Victor Hugo

Editor: Ernest Rhys

Translator: W. Moy Thomas

Release Date: May 12, 2010 [EBook #32338]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY

EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS

FICTION

HUGO'S TOILERS OF THE SEA

NOW NEWLY COMPLETED FROM
W. MOY THOMAS'S TRANSLATION

INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST RHYS

THIS IS NO. 509 OF EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY. THE PUBLISHERS WILL BE PLEASED
TO SEND FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED
VOLUMES ARRANGED UNDER THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS:

[Illustration: TRAVEL SCIENCE FICTION THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY HISTORY
CLASSICAL FOR YOUNG PEOPLE ESSAYS ORATORY POETRY & DRAMA BIOGRAPHY
REFERENCE ROMANCE]

THE ORDINARY EDITION IS BOUND IN CLOTH WITH GILT DESIGN AND COLOURED
TOP. THERE IS ALSO A LIBRARY EDITION IN REINFORCED CLOTH

J.M. DENT & SONS LTD.

ALDINE HOUSE, BEDFORD STREET, LONDON. W.C.2

E.P. DUTTON & CO.

681 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

[Illustration: A TALE WHICH HOLDETH CHILDREN FROM PLAY & OLD MEN FROM
THE CHIMNEY CORNER

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY]

[Illustration: TOILERS OF THE SEA

_by_ VICTOR HUGO

EVERY MAN I WILL GO WITH THEE BE THY GVIDE

IN THY MOST NEED TO GO BY THY SIDE

LONDON & TORONTO PUBLISHED BY J.M.DENT & SONS LTD & IN NEW YORK BY
E.P.DUTTON & CO]

_First Issue of this Edition 1911_ _Reprinted 1913, 1917, 1920, 1928_

_Printed in Great Britain_

INTRODUCTION

Victor Hugo was thinking much of AEschylus and his Prometheus at the time
he conceived the figure of Gilliatt, heroic warrer with the elements.
But it is to a creature of the Gothic mind like Byron's Manfred, and not
to any earlier, or classic, type of the eternal rebellion against fate
or time or circumstance, that Hugo's readers will be tempted to turn for
the fellow to his Guernsey hero:

"My joy was in the wilderness--to breathe
The difficult air of the iced mount