About Alexandre Dumas

Born in 1802, Alexandre Dumas was a prolific 19th-century French author and playwright. His works have been translated into many languages and have been widely popular. Dumas is one of France’s most celebrated literary figures of all time.

Famous Books by Alexandre Dumas

• The Count of Monte Cristo – This book and ‘The Three Musketeers’ vie for the most popular Alexandre Dumas works. Published in 1844, it tells the story of Edmond Dantes, a young sailor, framed as a Bonapartist and imprisoned. He escapes, finds a vast treasure, and returns to French society, transformed as the Count of Monte Cristo. He carries out an elaborate revenge scheme to repay all who conspired to send him to jail. Love and redemption, revenge and justice, and the influence of fate are some of the themes explored in ‘The Count of Monte Cristo‘.
• The Three Musketeers – This novel by Alexandre Dumas is a work of historical fiction set in the early 17th century. The story develops against the conflict between the monarchists and the republicans in France. D’Artagnan is a young Gascon who travels to Paris to join the celebrated Musketeers. A misunderstanding with three musketeer friends, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, that almost leads to a duel turns into a friendship. The four are drawn into political intrigues in the French court and government. This sets off the swashbuckling adventure, ‘ The Three Musketeers‘, which has remained popular over the ages and across different places.
• The Black Tulip – Alexandre Dumas published this work of historical fiction in 1850. The novel is set in 1672 when Haarlem in the Netherlands threw open a challenge to grow black tulips for the prize of 100,000 francs. Afraid that the protagonist, Cornelius van Baerle, is close to claiming the prize, an envious neighbor reports him to the authorities for being a rebel and is thrown into jail. In jail, however, he meets and falls in love with the jailer’s daughter, who assists him in working towards his objectives. There are thematic similarities between this story and ‘The Count of Monte Cristo‘.
• The Corsican Brothers – This novella was published in 1844. The story follows conjoined twins who were separated at birth, but they continue to feel each other’s emotions. One of the twins, Louis, becomes a lawyer in Paris, but the other, Lucien, remains in Corsica. When the Parisian twin is murdered, the Corsican goes to Paris to avenge his brother. The story of ‘The Corsican Brothers‘ has been adapted to theatre and film several times over the years, with varying degrees of faithfulness to the plot.
• The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later – This is the third installment in the D’Artagnan romances. It is divided into three mini-stories. The most popular is ‘The Man in the Iron Mask‘, which narrates a scheme by D’Artagnan to replace the French King Louis XIV with a look-alike imprisoned in the Bastille.
• Twenty Years After – Alexandre Dumas’s ‘Twenty Years After’ is the sequel of ‘The Three Musketeers’ and chronicles events twenty years after the first book. The history behind this work has moved to the Fronde civil wars between the forces of Louis XIV and the Republicans. D’Artagnan is tasked with bringing back the musketeers at the service of the Monarchists under Regent Queen Anne and Cardinal Mazarin. He finds that each has gone his own way. Only Porthos joins him; Aramis and Athos are committed to the side of the Republicans, and the former friends must confront each other on the battlefield.

Early Life

Dumas’s childhood was spent in hardship, especially since he lost his father in his childhood. General Thomas Alexandre died in 1806, only four years after his birth. Early in his career, Alexandre Dumas went to Paris and found work with the Duke of Orleans, who later became King Louise-Philippe. While in the duke’s employ, he wrote for magazines and plays for the theatre. His first play, ‘Henry III and His Court‘, was produced when he was twenty-seven and was very popular. His plays were somewhat crude and melodramatic but were found exciting by contemporary audiences. With the successes of his early plays, he made enough money to focus exclusively on writing as a career.

Literary Career

With clever marketing, Alexandre Dumas soon turned to writing novels, making his endeavor a commercial success. The serial novel published in newspapers was then in vogue. His first serial novel, ‘La Comtesse de Salisbury‘, was published in 1836.

Following his successes with the serialized novel format, Dumas began working with a production studio and staffing writers who churned out stories under his direction. He worked with a host of assistants and collaborators, including Auguste Maquet. The impact of August Maquet’s contribution to Dumas’ writing can be seen in a lawsuit Maquet brought to the court requesting that co-author credit and greater pay be granted him in their work. He only succeeded in getting a pay raise.

Dumas published many novels in his career, primarily serialized in newspapers before getting published as books. Some of his well known works include ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, ‘The Three Musketeers’, and ‘Twenty Years After’. His works featured fictionalized historical accounts and incorporated current affairs of the time. Generally, though, there was more emphasis on entertainment than accuracy in his fictional accounts, and his characters were basic and served to move a lively plot along. This seemed to be a savvy choice as he gained immense popularity.

Alexandre Dumas was prolific and versatile. He is said to have published over 100,000 pages, and he published a variety of genres. He was well traveled, living for a period in Spain, Italy, Belgium, England, French Algeria, and Russia, and he wrote extensively about his travels. He also wrote fictional and embellished autobiographies.

Later Life

Dumas lived an exciting life, and his political activity was no different. He participated in the revolution that installed his former patron, Louis Philippe, as king of France in 1830. When King Louis Philippe was removed and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, a political enemy, was elected president in 1851, Dumas went on a self-imposed exile to Brussels.

He published a novel in 1940, ‘The Fencing Master’, that touched on the Decembrist revolt in Russia. The book was banned in Russia, and Dumas was conditionally prohibited from visiting there.

At the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, Alexandre Dumas traveled to Italy and participated in the movement for unification. He founded a newspaper there and became friends with the Italian revolutionary leader, Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Financial success followed the commercial success of his work, but Dumas had a reputation for extravagance. Even though he made a lot of money from his writing, he was often broke, spending lavishly on women and luxurious indulgences, allegedly having forty mistresses, and keeping a lavish mansion where he hosted friends and strangers, sometimes for long periods. This arrangement was challenging to maintain, and he was soon forced to sell the house out of insolvency.

Alexandre Dumas married Ida Ferrier in 1840 but had no children together. He, however, fathered four children by his mistresses. His son, Alexandre Dumas, who became a successful writer in his own right, was the son of a mistress. (To distinguish father from son, he is called Pere, while his son is called Alexandre Dumas, fils).

Death and Legacy

Alexandre Dumas died on December 6, 1870, in what is suspected to be cardiac arrest. He was aged 68. Dumas was buried in his birthplace in Villers-Cotterets. In 1970, on the one-hundredth anniversary of his death, a train station in Paris was named after him. Also, in 2002, on the two-hundredth anniversary of the author, then-French President Jacques Chirac held a ceremony in his honor that had him disinterred and reburied in the Pantheon. The Pantheon is the mausoleum where notable French people, such as French authors Zola and Hugo, are buried. In response to the protest of the villagers of Dumas’ hometown from where his remains were relocated, the French president acknowledged that but for the racism of the past, Dumas rightfully had a place of honor in the Pantheon, and he was only righting a past wrong.

Dumas’s influence waned after his death due to changing literary tastes, and critics have been uncharitable to his works, regarding them as low-brow, sentimental, and crude. However, this romance literature and historical fiction writer was more interested in writing exciting and lively stories that entertained and remained emotionally stimulating. He emphasized writing about action-driven characters rather than subjects for deep psychological reflections. As a testament to his enduring legacy, his works have been translated into over 100 languages and adapted into over 200 movies. They continue to hold widespread interest even today.

Literature by Alexandre Dumas

Explore literature by Alexandre Dumas below, created by the team at Book Analysis.