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In 1822, Victor Hugo was only twenty and eager to make a name in the literary world, when he published his first important collection, the Odes et poésies diverses. It was a real success with the conservative readers (even with the ‘ultras’), and King Louis XVIII himself, after initial reservations, even granted an allowance to the hard-up viscount. This period in Hugo’s life and the poems’ composition bear the deep mark of his relationship with a great thinker and writer of the time, Lamennais, a churchman who, twenty years his senior, became his confessor and mentor for some time. The copy of Odes et poésies diverses that Hugo gave to this ‘respectable and illustrious friend’ provides the opportunity of examining this determinant relationship for the beginnings of the ‘Homme océan’, of recounting his first book’s genesis and studying the distribution, dedication and social offerings strategies set up by the beginner in literature.