Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 - 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote abundantly in an exceptional variety of genres: lyrics, satires, epics, philosophical poems, epigrams, novels, history, critical essays, political speeches, funeral orations, diaries, and letters public and private, as well as dramas in verse and prose. BOOK 8: CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM: It was into this house that Jean Valjean had, as Fauchelevent expressed it, "fallen from the sky." He had scaled the wall of the garden which formed the angle of the Rue Polonceau.