Date of publication: 1851 (french version)
Napoleon le Petit was an influential political pamphlet which condemned the reign of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. Hugo lived in exile in Guernsey for most of Napoleon III's reign, and his criticism of the monarch was significant as he was one of the most prominent Frenchmen of the time, and was revered by many. It includes the concept of two and two make five as a denial of truth by authority, a notion later used by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four
Volumes were smuggled into France (eg. in bales of hay, and between metal sheets as a tin of sardines), read at secret meetings, and hand-copied.
(From Wikipedia, description text under GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL))
Project Gutenberg Edition
Free ebook in HTML format - 491 Kb - 68 pages
Main topics: despotism, state, freedom, republic.
| 
Free ebooks 
