John Downing: Notre-Dame gets the happy ending denied to novel’s Quasimodo

Victor Hugo had no idea how many adaptations, spin-offs and films he was spawning when he published The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in 1831. The three-volume epic historical romance novel’s biliously busy plot is not so much a “love triangle” as a “love hexagon”, as many men vie for the affections of the dancer Esmeralda..