Novel

Toilers of the Sea

by Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo wrote it in exile on Guernsey, and dedicated it to the island. Gilliatt, a solitary fisherman, spends weeks alone on the Douvres rocks salvaging the engine of a wrecked steamer, and in a sea-cave fights the devil-fish, the pieuvre. The Guernsey word pieuvre passed into French through this book, and the octopus has been a monster of fiction ever since.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About 9 hr 50 min

Where to find it

Captain Nemo’s Salon

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #32338. In the public domain in the United States.