Randy life of married Les Miserables author who over bedded 200 women in TWO years and seduced his son’s lover

LOCKED in a room, hunched over his goose-quill pen and paper, author Victor Hugo poured out the words that would move the world for centuries to come.

It took him 20 years to finish Les Miserables but it might have taken longer had he not hit upon a unique way to overcome writer’s block — by bashing it out naked.

“Les Mis” is now hailed as one of the greatest works of literature. The stage musical based on the novel has been seen by more than 70million people in 51 countries — and now its latest  incarnation is set to be a TV hit.

The six-part BBC adaptation, which starts on Sunday, stars Broadchurch actress Olivia Colman, The Affair actor Dominic West and Lily Collins, actress daughter of musician Phil Collins.

But the life of writer, politician and human rights activist Victor, who also wrote The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, was far from miserable.

Possessing a voracious sexual ­appetite with a taste for whores, the randy Frenchman was a foot fetishist, a voyeur and even seduced the girlfriend of his own son.

In a two-year period he bedded more than 200 women — which can’t have been easy for his loyal wife Adele, mother of his five children and his childhood sweetheart.

Adele was his neighbour’s daughter, and they fell for each other as teens.

But as one of three sons of ­Napoleonic wars general Joseph ­Leopold Sigisbert Hugo, Victor was urged not to marry Adele.

His mother Sophie Trebuchet thought her boy should aim higher in society.

The pair initially conducted their romance via secret letters.

Even on the first one, Hugo signed off with, “Your husband.”

In another, he wrote: “Whenever I see anyone even approach you, I shudder with envy and exasperation. My muscles contract, my chest swells up and it takes all my force and circumspection to contain myself.”

They could only marry when Hugo’s mother died. He later bragged of making love to Adele nine times on their wedding night in 1822.

Biographer Edward Behr believes Adele never felt the same tender adoration towards her husband again.

But they did stay ­married for 48 years until her death in 1868.

The couple had five children — Leopold, who died in infancy, daughter Leopoldine, Charles, ­Francois-Victor and Adele.

Hugo and Adele were unfaithful to each other throughout the marriage.

She had a brief affair with her husband’s friend and literary critic Charles Sainte-Beuve — even as he championed the young writer’s poetry.

At around the same time Hugo seduced his first and all-time favourite ­mistress, Juliette Drouet.

He appointed her his unpaid “secretary” and she travelled with him for the next 50 years.

There were many others, but ­Victor always went back to Juliette.

Describing a typical day in Hugo’s life, one ­biographer wrote: “It was not unusual for him to make love to a young prostitute in the morning, an actress before lunch, a courtesan as an aperitif, and then join the also ­indefatigable Juliette for a night of sex.”

He would rate conquests in his bulging diary or an address book.

For example, according to biographer Graham Robb, Hugo wrote that ­Helena Gaussin was “beautiful but very thin,” while Mademoiselle Plessy was “pretty but with a poor ­figure, not much bust and long legs.” He hired ­prostitutes to put on strip shows for him and would pick up women on Paris buses. One of his mistresses, the married Leonie Biard, was discovered naked and “in criminal conversation” with Hugo.

She got sent to prison — while he got off scot-free.

But the most shocking was a liaison with actress Alice Ozy, the girlfriend of Hugo’s son Charles.

Charles thought Alice was being unfaithful and asked his dad for help. Immediately, Hugo wrote a series of filthy letters to Alice, possibly with the intention of exposing her as a cheat.

Instead, Alice fell for the erotic outpourings. Even poor Charles admitted he could see the attraction.

He wrote to Alice: “You choose the father and glory. I cannot blame you. Any woman would.”

If he wasn’t having sex, Hugo was a big fan of watching others do it. From 1832 to 1848, he lived on the second floor of a hotel in Paris, where he would entertain notable writers and artists. He installed peepholes in the guest rooms so he could watch them when they went to bed.

It was also in this hotel that he notched up 200 conquests in two years.

Biographer Robb noted that during the years 1847 to 1851, Hugo “had sex with more women than he wrote poems.”

At this point, the writer was already a big success, having published The Hunchback Of Notre Dame as well as other plays, poems and stories.

Rather than churning out Hunchback while in the nude, he beat his writer’s block that time by wearing a scratchy woollen body stocking day and night. This hot and itchy onesie is said to have cooled his sexual urges, allowing him to do some work instead.

After King Louis-Philippe gave him a peerage in 1845, Hugo campaigned against the death penalty and the vast gap between the rich and poor, as well as for freedom of the Press.

But Louis Napoleon seized power in 1851 — and Hugo’s vocal opposition put his life at risk. So he and his family went to live in exile in Guernsey, where he finished Les Miserables.

He secured a huge publishing deal for the novel, worth around £3million in today’s money, and the book sold out when it hit the shelves in 1862.

Today it is the longest-running ­musical in London’s West End while the novel has been translated into 21 languages. In 2012, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway took on the story’s iconic roles of Jean Valjean and ­Fantine in a blockbuster film musical.

When Hugo died in 1885, French newspaper Le Figaro declared on its front page: ­“Neither in this century, nor in any of the centuries that preceded it, has France possessed a poet of that height, abundance and scope.”

His body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe, draped in black and ­protected by guards on horseback.

Pedlars hawked souvenirs, from photos of artificial flowers with a picture of the writer’s face in the centre, to even pairs of trousers he once wore.

Diarist Edmond Goncourt claimed Hugo was so popular with prostitutes that the brothels in Paris closed for his funeral out of respect — and hundreds of whores mourned by draping their private parts with black material as they lined the Champs-Élysées.

Around 2million people turned out to watch the hearse travel from the Arc de Triomphe to the Pantheon, where Hugo is buried.

Savvy entrepreneurs charged ­mourners for a leg-up to watch from the branches of trees, while a woman fell off a parapet by the River Seine and drowned — as did the man who tried to save her.

Five others who sat on a branch were injured when it broke.

“Despite the unseemly squabbling, the injuries and deaths, there was a general feeling of satisfaction,” wrote Robb. For years afterwards, the funeral was one of the commonest shared memories of people all over France.”

And his masterpiece — as well as the details of his extraordinary private life — lives on to this day.

•  Les Miserables begins on Sunday on BBC1 at 9pm.

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