Released after nineteen years for stealing bread, Jean Valjean breaks parole, remakes himself as a factory owner and mayor, and is pursued across decades by the policeman Javert. Around them Hugo builds the Paris of the 1832 insurrection, with long digressions on the sewers, the convents and Waterloo. Published in 1862; Isabel Hapgood's 1887 translation, the first complete English version.
Public domain in the EU (author died 1885). Source: Project Gutenberg.