Liberté, égalité, fraternité - format MP3

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is one of the most well-regarded French writers of the nineteenth century. He was a poet, novelist and dramatist, and he is best remembered in English as the author of Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).

Hugo was born in Besançon, and became a pivotal figure of the Romantic movement in France, involved in both literature and politics. He founded the literary magazine Conservateur Littéraire in 1819, aged just seventeen, and turned his hand to writing political verse and drama after the accession to the throne of Louis-Philippe in 1830. His literary output was curtailed following the death of his daughter in 1843, but he began a new novel as an outlet for his grief. Completed many years later, this novel became Hugo's most notable work, Les Misérables.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was an American politician and statesman who served as the 32nd president of the United States. Elected to the presidency four times, Roosevelt repealed Prohibition, and stewarded the United States through both the Great Depression—during which he implemented innovative fiscal policies such as the New Deal and Social Security—and the Second World War. His advocacy of government social programs redefined liberalism and has had lasting impacts in the generations since his presidency.

In addition to his political contributions, Roosevelt, an adult sufferer of paralysis due to polio, founded the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which is now known as the March of Dimes. Roosevelt was married to his cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt (a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt), for forty years, and was father to five surviving children. Franklin Roosevelt died suddenly in April 1945, but his contributions continue to be recognized through the many institutions that carry his name, through his image on the American dime, and as part of the Prominent Americans postage stamp series issued by the United States Postal Service. Roosevelt, along with his wife Eleanor and cousin Theodore, is the subject of the 2014 Ken Burns documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.