In Pursuit of Love: The Search for Victor Hugo's Daughter - Mark Bostridge

From Normandy to the Caribbean Islands, this innovative biographical pursuit follows Adèle Hugo on her reckless journey of unrequited love - and the writer who chased after her more than 150 years later.

It's 1863. The daughter of the most famous writer in the world, Victor Hugo, who has ambitions as a writer and composer, suddenly leaves her family's home on the Channel Islands bound for Nova Scotia.

She is in pursuit of a young British soldier, with whom she is desperately in love, but who has rejected her. Eight years later, after stalking him to the Caribbean, where he's stationed with the army, Adèle Hugo is brought back to Paris by a benevolent former slave woman who has taken pity on her. She is admitted to an asylum where she dies decades later, rich from the inheritance of the rights to her father's books.

This story of hopeless love has inspired writers, composers, and a well-known film by François Truffaut. Yet much about Adèle Hugo's tragic life has remained shrouded in mystery - not least the true character and identity of the soldier who ultimately contributed to her undoing.