Hugo's two greatest novels, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables, needed editorial restraint at least as much as the second volume of War and Peace, but the author was too powerful to be bossed around.
Many years ago, editors of these works did for the reading public what those editors had been unable to do, cutting the blathering and publishing abridged editions.
That seems to have gone out of fashion.
But I suppose it doesn't matter, since most readers seem to have given up on literature and now prefer genre fiction.
Correction. B&N has an abridged edition of Les Mis that's merely 896 pages long.
Victor Hugo's Notre Dame novel tops bestseller list after fire
And, no, the unabridged first French edition did not run to eleven volumes, but only two.
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