Short answers, pulled from the story.
Victor Hugo is best known for the novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, published in 1831, and Les Misérables, published in 1862. In France he is also celebrated for his poetry collections, including Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles.
Hugo went into exile after Louis Napoleon, later Napoleon III, seized power in 1851 and established an anti-parliamentary constitution. Hugo openly declared him a traitor to France, then fled to Brussels and later to the Channel Islands, settling in Guernsey from October 1855 until Napoleon III fell from power in 1870.
Hugo campaigned throughout his life for the abolition of capital punishment and slavery, universal suffrage, free education for all children, and freedom of the press. His influence was credited in the removal of the death penalty from the constitutions of Geneva, Portugal, and Colombia.
More than two million people joined Hugo's funeral procession in Paris, making it the largest funeral in French history. He was buried in the Panthéon, where he shares a crypt with Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola.
More than one hundred operas draw on Hugo's works, including Verdi's Rigoletto (1851) and Ernani (1844), Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia (1833), and Ponchielli's La Gioconda (1876). His novels also inspired the musicals Les Misérables, which became the longest-running musical on London's West End, and Notre-Dame de Paris.
Hugo's religious views changed markedly over his life. He began as a Catholic under his mother's influence, then became increasingly anti-clerical. In later years he settled into a rationalist deism. When a census-taker asked in 1872 if he was a Catholic, he replied: "No. A Freethinker." He still believed in life after death and prayed every morning and night.