By Order of the King [The Man Who Laughs]

x, 521 pp. First published in 1869 and written whilst in exile on Guernsey, The Man Who Laughs is a novel recounting the fortunes and otherwise of Gwynplaine, first a boy and then a man with mysterious origins who is so facially disfigured that he always appears to be laughing. The only person who doesn't appreciate his disfigurement is the blind girl Dea, whom Gwynplaine rescued from certain death in the novel's prologue.