Bibliography: Les Miserables by Hugo, Victor

In an 1897 Courier article, Cather quotes from Book V, Chapter XI in a piece on Heine, and notes that the novel had "just been thrown out of the high school library of Phildadelphia as an unfitting work for youthful minds"; concludes that "If one took things hard in a land where Heine fountains are forbidden, and Les Miserables thrown out of the libraries, and Lillian Russell considered a great artist... there would be nothing left to one but suicide or insanity."

In an 1897 Home Monthly article Cather says, "I never feel the spring come back and see the violets on the stands at the street corners, and hear the birds begin to call to each other, that I don't go back and read Les Miserables over again."