The Toilers of the sea/Les Travailleurs de la mer
Dedicated to the people of the island, Hugo's book was conceived and written entirely in Guernsey
Click below/cliquez ci-dessous:
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- Buy Patrick Dickson’s Audiobook ‘The Toilers of the Sea’ (abridged, with authentic Guernsey accents!)
- Keith Robinson’s designs for Guernsey Post 2016
- Remarkable literary incident (Guernsey newspaper article 1866)
- Les Travailleurs de la mer [Les Essentiels: Littérature] (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
- An Introduction to Les Travailleurs de la mer (BnF Classes)
- The manuscript (BnF):
D’emblée, Les Travailleurs de la mer furent conçus comme un livre d’exception. Après avoir confié le manuscrit à Turner, son relieur guernesiais, Victor Hugo y fait monter, ou y monte lui-même trente-six de ses dessins. Ce ne sont pas des illustrations du roman, mais un choix effectué parmi des compositions qui ont précédé, accompagné ou même suivi la rédaction de l’œuvre, reflets de la création graphique du poète, à la fin de l’exil : un dessin de voyage, des marines, des caricatures. Aucune autre œuvre ne devait donner lieu à une telle «illustration».
Toilers of the Sea was always going to be an exceptional book. Having entrusted the manuscript to his Guernsey bookbinder, Henry Turner, Hugo then had him mount in – or mounted in himself – 36 of his own drawings. Rather than illustrations for the book, these were drawings chosen from among those he had already drawn or had created during the process of writing the book, or in some cases dating from after the book was finished. They reflect his graphic imagination at the end of his exile: a travel drawing, seascapes, caricatures. This is the sole work of Hugo’s that was ever to be ‘illustrated’ in this way. (BnF)