Les Misérables is about my memories of my time in Toulon and Montreuil-sur-Mer. As has been accurately revealed by an unnamed internet website named for a bridge in Paris, and subsequently acknowledged by me, during the process of this work I embelleshed many details about my past experiences and altered others in order to serve what I felt was the greater purpose of the book. I sincerely apologize for being caught. I mean, I apologize to those readers who have been disappointed by my actions.

I first sat down to tell Victor Hugo my story in 1855. I didn't initially think of the book as nonfiction or fiction, memoir or autobiography. I wanted to use my experiences to tell my story about love and redemption and sacrifice and so on. I wanted to write a book that would change lives, would help people who were struggling, would inspire them in some way. I wanted to write a book that would detail the fight that the oppressed masses experience day to day, that would help society at large understand that fight.

I worked primarily from memory. I also used supporting documents from banks and police statements and hospital records as well as personal journals, when I had them and when they were relevant. I wanted the stories in the book to ebb and flow, to have dramatic arcs, and to have the tension that all great stories require. I altered events and details all the way through the book. Some of those include my role in an accident involving a cart and horse that injured its driver. While I was not in real life directly involved in the accident, I was profoundly affected by it. Others involved jail time I served, which in the book is nineteen years, but which in reality was only several hours, and I was bailed out by my brother, who wasn't dead, and certain criminal events, including an arrest in Digne, which were embelleshed. There was only one candlestick, and it was pewter, and it wasn't a Bishop, it was a lay minister. And I paid for the candlestick. The incident with the chimney-sweep was entirely fabricated.

There has been much discussion about a scene where Fantine dies of a shock while suffering consumption. I wrote that passage from memory, and have medical records that seem to support it, but my account has been questioned by the nuns in residence and they believe my memory may be flawed. Fantine had only a slight cough, not tuberculosis, and I can't really say what killed her.

In addition, names and identifying characteristics of all the revolutionaries in the book, including names, ages, places of residence and places and means of death, were changed to protect the anonymity of those involved in this period of my life. This was done in the spirit of respecting every individual's anonymity, which in a revolution is very, very important.

I made other alterations in my portrayal of myself, most of which portrayed me in ways that made me stronger and more daring and more aggressive than in reality I was, or I am. I never scaled a convent wall; I broke the lock on the gate with a hammer. And my doctor has already attested that I could never lift an adult male and carry him across the street, let alone through the sewers. But people cope with adversity in many different ways, ways that are deeply personal; I think one way people cope, at least in my personal experience, is to invent obsessive and relentless police pursuit. My mistake, and it is one I deeply regret, is getting caught. Damn, I said it again. My mistake, I mean, was writing about the person I created in my mind to help me cope, not the person who underwent this experience.

There is much debate now about the respective natures of works of memoir, fiction, and nonfiction, most of which originates with me trying to cover my own derriere. That debate will likely continue for some time, as long as it sells copies of the book. I believe, and I understand others strongly disagree, that memoir allows the writer to work from memory and not from a strict journalistic or historical standard; many of the throwaway historical references used to illustrate the state of the world in 1815, for example, or even 1832, are misremembered or outright inaccuracies. It is about impression and feeling, about individual recollection. This memoir is a combination of facts about my life and certain embellishments. It is a subjective truth, altered by the mind of a redeemed convict. Ultimately, it's a story, and one that I could not have written without having lived the life I've lived. Oh, and I didn't die at the end of the book, either. Obviously.

I never expected M. Hugo's work to become as successful as it has, to sell anywhere close to the number of copies it has sold. The experience has been shocking to me, incredibly humbling, and at times terrifying... although not nearly as terrifying as nearly being buried alive in a coffin, which I imagine is pretty terrifying because that didn't happen to me either. Throughout this process I have met thousands of readers and heard from many thousands more who were deeply affected by the book and whose lives were changed by it. I am deeply sorry to any readers who I have disappointed and hope these revelations will not alter their faith in the book's central message: that poverty and oppression can be overcome, and there is always a path to redemption if you fight to find one. Like I'm fighting for one right now. Or if not redemption, then at least the responsibility, like a horse cart, can be shifted off.