What to read after The Man Who Laughs?

The Man Who Laughs is a philosophical novel by Victor Hugo published in April 1869, whose action takes place in England at the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He is notably famous for the mutilated figure in a permanent laugh of his eponymous hero who strongly inspired the literary and cinematographic world. Genesis From 1861 to 1862, Victor Hugo planned to write a political trilogy: a book dealing with the aristocracy (L'Homme qui rit), another dealing with the monarchy and the last dealing with the revolution (Quatreving-thirteen) . We have traces of this project by notes taken by Victor Hugo in the years 1862 and 1863, concerning the study of a Chronicle of the Regency and of the Reign of Louis XV, or Journal de Barbier. This fact is confirmed by the introduction of The Laughing Man: -The true title of this book would be the Aristocracy. Another book, which will follow, may be called the Monarchy. And these two books, if the author is given the task of completing this work, will precede and bring forth another which will be entitled: Quatreving-thirteen. 2 It is in Barbier's Journal that he finds inspiration for certain scenes in the novel: the mutilation suffered by Gwynplaine is identical to that perpetrated on the galley slaves and described in the Journal de Barbier, it is also in Barbier that We hear of the theft of children. Victor Hugo began writing his work on 21 July 1866 in Brussels and completed it two years later, on 23 August 1868, still in Brussels. But it is in exile in Guernsey that he writes most of it. He interrupted himself in 1867 to write the play Eat? (Which is part of the collection Theater in Liberty), another reflection on power and human appetites4. In the course of writing his project is enriched: the book will not only be political but philosophical, historical and poetic