I’m proud to say I have read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. If you’ve ever tackled it, you’ll know why I’m proud: it is a dense (in more ways than one) and lengthy novel, and so not an easy book to get through. All the characters are well-drawn, but of course the character most apropos to this blog is Cosette. The book follows her life from infancy to young womanhood and is in many ways as much about her as it is about Jean Valjean. Several artists have illustrated the book, including Louis Moe, Pierre Jeanniot, and the incomparable Lynd Ward, but of course the most famous illustration for the book is this one done by Émile Antoine Bayard, as it was later used in the poster design for long-running musical version of Les Mis and thus became an iconic image.
Émile Antoine Bayard – Cosette