Alexandre Dumas Biography and List of Works

One of the most famous French writers of the 19th century in the world. Dumas is best known for historical the novels The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, which belong to the foundation works of popular culture. He was among the first, along with Honoré de Balzac and Eugène Sue, who fully used the possibilities of roman feuilleton, the serial novel. Dumas is credited with revitalizing the historical novel in France. However, his abilities as a writer have been disputed from the beginning - Dumas' works are riveting, fast-paced adventure tales that blend history and fiction, on the other hand, the are too long, melodramatic, and distort the historical facts.

  "'Diable!' he said, after having swallowed the divine preserve. 'I do not know it the result will be as agreeable as you describe, but the thing does not appear to me as palatable as you say.'
   'Because your palates has not yet been attuned to the sublimity of the substances it flavours. Tell me, the first time you tasted oysters, tea, porter, truffels, and sundry other dainties which you now adore, did you like them? Could you comprehend how the Romans stuffed their pheasants with assafœtida, and the Chinese eat swallows' nests? Eh? no! Well, it is the same with hashish; only eat for a week and nothing in the world will seem to you to equal the delicacy of its flavor, which now appears to you flat and distasteful. Let us now go into the adjoining chamber, which is your apartment, and Ali will bring us coffee and pipes.'"
(from The Count of Monte Cristo)

Alexandre Dumas was born in Villes-Cotterêts. His grandfather was a French nobleman, who had settled in Santo Domingo (now part of Haiti); his paternal grandmother, Marie-Cessette, was an Afro-Caribbean, who had been a black slave in the French colony (now part of Haiti). After his father's death, who was a general in Napoleon's army, the family lived in poverty. Dumas worked as a notary's clerk and went in 1823 to Paris to find work. Because of his elegant handwriting he secured a position with the Duc d'Orléans - later King Louis Philippe. He also found his place in theater and as a publisher of some obscure magazines. An illegitimate son called Alexandre Dumas fils, whose mother, Marie-Catherine Labay, was a dressmaker, was born in 1824.

As a playwright Dumas made his breakthrough with HENRI III ET SA COUR (1829), which gained a huge success. Dumas went on to write additional plays, of which LA TOUR DE NESLE (1832, The Tower of Nesle) is considered the greatest masterpiece of French melodrama. He wrote constantly, producing a steady stream of plays, novels, and short stories.

"All for one, one for all, that is our device."
(from The Three Musketeers)

Historical novels brought Dumas enormous fortune. He produced some 250 books with his 73 assistants, especially with the history teacher Auguste Maquet, whom he allowed to work quite independently. Dumas earned roughly 200,000 francs yearly and received an annual sum of 63,000 francs for 220,000 lines from the newspapers Presse and the Constitutionel. Maquet often proposed subjects and wrote first drafts for some of Dumas' most famous serial novels, including LES TROIS MOUSQUETAIRES (1844, The Three Musketeers) and LE COMTE DE MONTE-CRISTO (1844-45, The Count of Monte-Cristo). As a master dialogist, Dumas developed character traits, and kept the action moving, and composed the all-important chapter endings - teaser scenes that maintained suspense and readers interest to read more.

Dumas' role in the development of the historical novel owes much to an coincidence. The lifting of press censorship in the 1830s gave rise to a rapid spread of newspapers. Editors began to lure readers by entertaining serial novels. Everybody read them, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie, young and old, men and women. Dumas' first true serial novel was LE CAPITAINE PAUL (1838, Captain Paul), a quick rewrite of a play.

Dumas lived as adventurously as the heroes in his books. He took part in the revolution of July 1830, caught cholera during the epidemic of 1832, and traveled in Italy to recuperate. He married his mistress Ida Ferrier, an actress, in 1840, but he soon separated after having spent her entire dowry. With the money earned from his writings, he built a fantastic château Montecristo on the outskirts of Paris. In 1851 Dumas escaped his creditors and spent two years in exile in Brussels (1855-57). In 1858 he traveled to Russia and in1860 he went to Italy, where he supported Garibaldi and Italy's struggle for independence (1860-64). He then remained in Naples as a keeper of the museums for four years. After his return to France his debts continued to mount.

Called as "the king of Paris", Dumas earned fortunes and spent them right away on friends, art, and mistresses. Dumas died of a stroke on December 5, 1870, at Puys, near Dieppe. His son Alexandre Dumas fils, became a writer, dramatist, and moralist, who in vain tried to convince his father that he should reform and change his way of life.

Dumas did not generally define himself as a black man, but his works were popular among the 19th-century African-Americans, partly because in The Count of Monte-Cristo the falsely imprisoned Edmond Dantès may be read as a parable of emancipation. In a shorter work, GEORGES (1843, George), Dumas examined the question of race and colonialism. The main character, a half-French mulatto, leaves Mauritius to be educated in France, then returns to avenge himself for the affronts he had suffered as a boy.

Dumas's central works made up a romantic fictional history of France, but they also had supernatural elements and characters, that preceded the superheroes of the 20th-century. These stories include LE CHÂTEAU D'EPPSTEIN (1844), a ghost story, LES FRÈRES CORSE (1844), where Siamese twins, separated at birth, maintain a psychic knowledge of each other's dire fates, ISAAC LAQUEDEM (1853), a Wandering-Jew tale, and LE MENEUR DE LOUPS (1857), where a young man agrees a pact with the Devil. His play LE VAMPIRE (1851), was a Byronic vampire tale.

The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45) - The protagonist, Edmond Dantés, is about to marry his sweetheart and become a captain of a vessel. He is framed by three enemies as a Napoleonic conspirator, shortly before Napoleon's dramatic return from Elba in 1815. Dantés is imprisoned in the Chateau d'If, by the politician Villefort who is anxious to conceal his own father's machinations on behalf of Bonaparte. Educated by the Abbé Faria, Dantés remains in the French Alcatraz 14 years, before he manages to escape, in a highly dramatic manner. He flees to the island of Monter Cristo, and locates a fabulous treasure, hidden since the time of Renaissance, although known to Faria. As the Count of Monte Cristo and with the wealth of the treasure Dantés destroys his enemies. - The novel originated from Dumas' acquaintance with Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoléon Bonaparte's brother, whose younger son Dumas took occasionally on short educational journeys. Returning from Elba, Dumas spotted another island, the deserted Monte-Carlo, about which he determined to write a novel in remembrance of the trip. The story embodies the revenge of Napoleonic romanticism upon the restored royal house of Orléans. In the person of Dantés, an universal vigilante, Dumas shows the wrong side of the bourgeois world and rotten family structures.

'Let it be as you wish, my sweet angel' said the Count. 'God has sustained me against my enemies and I see now He does not wish me to end my triumph with repentance. I intended punishing myself, but God has pardoned me! Love me, Haydee! Who knows? Perhaps your love will help me to forget all I do not wish to remember! Come, Haydee!'
(from The Count of Monte Cristo)

For further reading: Alexandre Dumas pére by Hippolyte Parigot (1902); The Fourth Musketeer by J. Lucas-Dubreton (1928); The Laughing Mulatto by R. Todd (1940); Alexandre Dumas by A.C. Bell (1950); Alexandre Dumas: A Great Life in Brief by André Maurois (1955); The Titans by André Maurois (1957); The Life and Writings of Alexandre Dumas by Harry A. Spurr (1972); Alexandre Dumas père et la Comèdie Française by F. Bassan and S. Chevalley (1972); Alexandre Dumas (père) by Richard S. Stowe (1976); Alexandre Dumas by F.W.J. Hemmings (1979); 'Missing' Works of Alexandre Dumas, Pere by Douglas Munro (1983); General Alexandre Dumas: Soldier of the French Revolution by John G. Gallaher (1997) - Museum: Chateau de Montecristo, 1 avenue Kennedy, 78560 Port-Marly, Yvelines - home of Alexandre Dumas, where he wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte-Cristo; Musée Alexandre Dumas, 24 rue Démoustier, 02600 Villes-Citterêts - museum devoted to Alexnadre Dumas and Alexandre Dumas fils. - NOTE: Dumas' novel La Royale Maison de Savoie, which appeared first in 1854 serialized in an Italian magazine, is published again in four volumes.

LA CHASSE ET L'AMOUR, (1825)