Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), French novelist and playwright of the romantic period, known as Dumas père. Dumas, the most widely read of all French writers, is best remembered for his historical novels The Three Musketeers (1844; trans. 1846) and The Count of Monte-Cristo (1844; trans. 1846).

Dumas was born in Villers-Cotterêts, Aisne, July 24, 1802. He was the son of a general and the grandson of a nobleman who had settled in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and married a black woman there. He had little formal education but read voraciously and was especially attracted to 16th- and 17th-century adventure stories. While working as a clerk, he attended performances of an English Shakespearean company and was inspired to write drama. The Comédie Française produced his play Henri III et sa cour (Henry III and His Court) in 1829 and the romantic drama Christine in 1830; both were resounding successes.

Dumas was a prolific writer; about 1200 volumes were published under his name. Although many were the result of collaboration or the production of a “fiction factory” in which hired writers executed his ideas, almost all the writing bears the unmistakable imprint of his personal genius and inventiveness.

Dumas's earnings were enormous but scarcely sufficient in his later years to sustain his extravagant style of living. He spent great sums of money in maintaining his estate outside Paris (Monte-Cristo), supporting numerous mistresses (one of whom was the mother of his son Alexandre), purchasing artworks, and making up the losses incurred by numerous business ventures. At his death, on December 5, 1870, he was virtually bankrupt.

Besides his historical novels, the works of Dumas include the plays Antony (1831), La tour de Nesle (The Tower of Nesle, 1832), Catherine Howard (1834), and L'Alchimiste (The Alchemist, 1839), as well as numerous dramatizations of his own fiction. He also wrote memoirs, which give a vivid picture of his times.