The Same Passage

Which translation of Les Misérables should you read?

Victor Hugo · French · prose

Hugo wrote a vast, surging, digression-loving novel: the story of Jean Valjean is forever pausing for a hundred pages on the Battle of Waterloo, the Paris sewers, or the argot of thieves. So a translator faces two decisions at once. First, how to carry Hugo’s big, rhetorical, exclamatory voice into English without it tipping into bombast. Second, what to do with the digressions and the archaic slang: keep every word, or trim. Abridged or complete, faithful or fluent, is the whole question here.

Our verdict

For a modern complete read, Christine Donougher (2013): fresh, accurate, and readable, and now many critics’ first choice. Julie Rose (2008) is livelier and more colloquial, with copious notes. For a free public-domain version, Isabel Hapgood’s 1887 translation is complete and faithful, if Victorian in tone. Beware the many old abridged editions that quietly cut Hugo’s digressions.

Best modern read
Christine Donougher

Fresh, faithful, and complete; the current critical favourite.

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Free and complete
Isabel Florence Hapgood

The classic public-domain version, unabridged and dependable.

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Liveliest modern
Julie Rose

Bold, colloquial, heavily annotated; divisive but never dull.

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The same passage, side by side

Pick a passage and set two or three translations against each other. An answer can tell you which is “more faithful”; only this lets you hear them.

Passage
Monsieur Myriel
Vol. 1, Book 1, Ch. 1 · The novel opens not on Valjean but on a saintly provincial bishop whose kindness sets everything in motion. A gentle test of how each version handles Hugo’s measured narrative voice.
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Isabel Florence Hapgood
1887 · prose · public domain
In 1815, M. Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D—— He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D—— since 1806. Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.
tr. Isabel F. Hapgood, 1887Buy this edition →

The field at a glance

TranslationYearVoiceApproachNotes
Isabel Florence Hapgood
Prose · public domain
1887PeriodFaithfulCleanBuy →
Christine Donougher
Prose
2013ModernBalancedAnnotatedBuy →
Julie Rose
Prose
2008ModernFluidAnnotatedBuy →
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Every translation in depth

Isabel Florence Hapgood

1887 · public domain
ProsePeriodFaithfulOrnateClean

The free, complete standard. Isabel Hapgood’s 1887 version keeps all of Hugo, digressions and all, and follows him closely, so it is the dependable no-cost way to read the whole novel. It is unmistakably Victorian: the diction is formal and a little stiff, Hugo’s big rhetorical set-pieces come through in an elevated older English, and the slang of the sewers and the barricades loses some of its bite. Modern translations read more naturally. But for the entire book, faithfully rendered and free, Hapgood remains the reliable public-domain choice.

The enduring free complete translation (1887); ubiquitous online (Project Gutenberg #135).

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Christine Donougher

2013 · in copyright
ProseModernBalancedMiddleAnnotated

The best modern complete Les Misérables, by many lights. Christine Donougher gives Hugo in clear, supple, contemporary English that keeps his sweep and rhetoric without letting them curdle into bombast, and she renders the whole book, digressions intact, with excellent notes and an introduction by Robert Tombs. It reads faster and more naturally than Hapgood while staying faithful, and it handles the slang and the set-pieces with real assurance. If you want one unabridged Les Misérables to actually read and finish, this is the current first recommendation.

The Penguin Classics edition (2013); widely reviewed as the finest modern English version.

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Julie Rose

2008 · in copyright
ProseModernFluidMiddleAnnotated

The bold, talkative one. Julie Rose translates Hugo into vivid, thoroughly modern, sometimes slangy English and is not shy about it, with more than a hundred pages of notes to back her choices. Admirers find it the liveliest, most immediate Les Misérables in English; detractors think the contemporary idiom and the occasional anachronism pull against Hugo’s period voice. Either way it is complete and never dull. Choose Rose if you want the novel to crackle and do not mind a translator with a strong, audible personality.

The Modern Library edition (2008), introduced by Adam Gopnik; admired and argued over for its modern voice.

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Which book is which translation?

Publishers and retailers are careless about naming the translator. Here is which edition carries which version.

EditionTranslationFormat
Penguin Classics
Penguin, 2015 · intro Robert Tombs
Christine DonougherPaperbackBuy →
Modern Library
Modern Library, 2009 · intro Adam Gopnik
Julie RosePaperbackBuy →
We verify the top in-print editions against the actual copyright page and show the confidence for each. Spotted a wrong mapping? Tell us.

Questions

What is the best translation of Les Misérables?

There is no single best, only the best for you. See the verdict at the top for our picks by priority (closest to the original, most readable, best value), then use the side-by-side passages and the quiz to choose.

How many translations of Les Misérables are there?

We compare 3 notable English translations here, from the public-domain classics to the current in-print versions, with the same passages set side by side.

Which Les Misérables translation is easiest to read?

Look at the “Voice” and “Approach” columns in the table: the most modern, most fluid version is usually the easiest first read. The quiz will point you to it based on your taste.

Are the excerpts accurate?

Public-domain excerpts are reproduced verbatim from a cited source and checked against it. In-copyright translations are quoted only as short excerpts beside a link to that edition. We name the translator and edition for every excerpt.