William Shakespeare is an 1864 work by Victor Hugo, written in his 13th year of exile. The title is misleading; the true subject of the work is the writers that Hugo considered "the greatest geniuses of all time." When Hugo began writing it, he intended for it to be an introduction for a collection of French translations of Shakespeare's plays written by his son, François-Victor Hugo. However, it grew to be approximately 300 pages in length, and Hugo had to write a separate introduction to the plays.