Claude Gueux, 1834
Original title: Claude Gueux
Claude Gueux was first published in Revue de Paris 6 July and then as a booklet on 6 September. Written in three days in June, it was a documentary short story about a real murderer who had been executed in Troyes two years earlier.
Like The Last Days of a Condemned Man, it was a criticism of laws created for the rich and powerful; of social injustice causing undeserved suffering. Not focusing on capital punishment, Claude Gueux was more a call for education as an antidote to crime.
By this time, Hugo was already planning to write a major work on social misery, Les Misères. When he later realized this plan, he made a humble reference to his own work in this passage:
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"This word gamin was printed for the first time, and reached popular speech through the literary tongue, in 1834. It is in a little work entitled Claude Gueux that this word made its appearance. The horror was lively. The word passed into circulation." - Les Miserables
