Toilers of the Sea is a novel by Victor Hugo set on the island of Guernsey. It follows a solitary fisherman, Gilliatt, and his arduous struggle with the sea and its dangers. It is worth listening to for its lyrical prose and meditation on nature, isolation, and human endurance.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS FICTION HUGO’S TOILERS OF THE SEA NOW NEWLY COMPLETED FROM W. MOY THOMAS’S TRANSLATION INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST RHYS THIS IS NO. 509 OF EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY. THE PUBLISHERS WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED VOLUMES ARRANGED UNDER THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS:
TRAVEL · SCIENCE · FICTION
THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
HISTORY · CLASSICAL
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
ESSAYS · ORATORY
POETRY & DRAMA
BIOGRAPHY
REFERENCE
ROMANCE
THE ORDINARY EDITION IS BOUND
IN CLOTH WITH GILT DESIGN AND
COLOURED TOP. THERE IS ALSO A
LIBRARY EDITION IN REINFORCED CLOTH
J.M. DENT & SONS LTD.
ALDINE HOUSE, BEDFORD STREET, LONDON. W.C.2
E.P. DUTTON & CO.
681 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
First Issue of this Edition 1911
Reprinted 1913, 1917, 1920, 1928
Printed in Great Britain
INTRODUCTION
Victor Hugo was thinking much of Æschylus and his Prometheus at the time he conceived the figure of Gilliatt, heroic warrer with the elements. But it is to a creature of the Gothic mind like Byron’s
Manfred, and not to any earlier, or classic, type of the eternal rebellion against fate or time or circumstance, that Hugo’s readers will be tempted to turn for the fellow to his Guernsey hero:
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