copyright 1961; The Heritage Press publishers, New York; includes the original "The Heritage Club Sandglass" flier (pic); very good condition with unmarked pages; slipcase very good.
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"In the translation by Isabel F. Hapgood and with an introduction by Matthew Josephon; Illustrated with wood-engravings by Tranquillo Marangoni"
Toilers of the Sea (French: Les Travailleurs de la mer) is a novel by Victor Hugo originally published in 1866. The book is dedicated to the island of Guernsey, where Hugo spent 15 years in exile. Hugo uses the setting of a small island community to transmute seemingly mundane events into drama of the highest calibre. Les Travailleurs de la Mer is set just after the Napoleonic Wars and deals with the impact of the Industrial Revolution upon the island.
The story concerns a Guernseyman named Gilliatt, a social outcast who falls in love with Deruchette, the niece of a local shipowner, Mess Lethierry. When Lethierry's ship is wrecked on the double Douvres, a perilous reef, Deruchette promises to marry whoever can salvage the ship's steam engine. (The cliff of the double Douvres is not the same as the well-known and also dangerous Roches Douvres, which today has a lighthouse – Hugo himself draws attention to this in the work.) Gilliatt eagerly volunteers, and the story follows his physical trials and tribulations (which include a battle with an octopus), as well as the undeserved opprobrium of his neighbours.