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Alexandre Dumas, père, born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870) was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world. Many of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne were originally serialized. He also wrote plays and magazine articles and was a prolific correspondent. Alexandre Dumas was born in Villers-Cotterêts in the department of Aisne, in Picardy, France. Dumas' paternal grandparents were Marquis Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman and Général commissaire in the Artillery in the colony of Saint-Domingue — now Haiti — and Marie-Cesette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean Creole of mixed French and African ancestry. Their son, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, married Marie-Louise Élisabeth Labouret, the daughter of an innkeeper. Thomas-Alexandre, then a general in Napoleon's army, fell out of favor and the family was impoverished when Dumas was born. Thomas-Alexandre
Dumas died in 1806, when his son was still an infant. His widow was
unable to provide her son with much of education, but Dumas read
everything he could get his hands on. His mother's stories of his
father's brave deeds during the years of Napoleon I of France inspired Dumas' vivid imagination for adventure. Although poor, the family had
their father's distinguished reputation and aristocratic connections.
In 1822, after the restoration of the monarchy, twenty-year-old Alexandre Dumas moved to Paris, where he worked at the Palais Royal in the office of duc d'Orléans (Louis Philippe). While in Paris, Dumas began writing for magazines and plays for the theater. His first play, Henry III and His Court, was produced in 1829, meeting with acclaim. The next year his second play, Christine,
was equally popular, and he was financially able to work full time on
writing. In 1830 he participated in the Revolution which ousted Charles X, and which replaced him on the throne with Dumas' former employer, the Duc d' Orléans, who would rule as Louis-Philippe, the Citizen King.
Until the mid-1830s life in France remained unsettled, with sporadic
riots by disgruntled Republicans and impoverished urban workers seeking
change. As life slowly returned to normal, the nation began to
industrialize, and with an improving economy -- combined with the end of press censorship -- the times turned out to be very rewarding for the skills of Alexandre Dumas. After
writing more successful plays, he turned his efforts to novels.
Although attracted to an extravagant lifestyle, and always spending
more than he earned, Dumas proved to be a very astute marketer. As
there was high demand from newspapers for serial novels, in 1838, Dumas
simply rewrote one of his plays to create his first serial novel, titled Le Capitaine Paul,
which led to his forming a production studio that turned out hundreds
of stories, all subject to his personal input and direction. From 1839 to 1841 Dumas, with the assistance of several friends, compiled Celebrated Crimes, an eight-volume collection of essays on famous criminals and crimes from European history, including essays on Beatrice Cenci; Martin Guerre; Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia; and more recent incidents, including the cases of executed alleged murderers Karl Ludwig Sand and Antoine François Desrues. Dumas also collaborated with his fencing master Augustin Grisier in his 1840 novel, The Fencing Master. The story is written to be Grisier's narrated account of how he came to witness the events of the Decembrist revolt in Russia. This novel was eventually banned in Russia by Czar Nicholas I,
causing Dumas to be forbidden to visit Russia until after the czar's
death. Grisier is also mentioned with great respect in both The Count of Monte Cristo and The Corsican Brothers, as well as in Dumas' memoirs. On
1 February 1840 he married an actress, Ida Ferrier, born
Marguerite-Joséphine Ferrand (1811—1859) but continued with his
numerous liaisons with other women, fathering at least four
illegitimate children. One of those children, a son named after him,
whose mother was Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay (1794—1868), a dressmaker,
would follow in his footsteps, also becoming a successful novelist and
playwright. Because of their same name and occupation, to distinguish
them, one is referred to as Alexandre Dumas, père, the other as Alexandre Dumas, fils. Dumas made extensive use of the aid of numerous assistants and collaborators, of whom Auguste Maquet was the best known. It was Maquet who outlined the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo, and made substantial contributions to The Three Musketeers and
its sequels, as well as to several of Dumas' other novels. When they
were working together, Maquet proposed plots and wrote drafts, while
Dumas added the details, dialogues, and the final chapters. Dumas'
writing earned him a great deal of money, but Dumas was frequently
broke or in debt, as a result of spending lavishly on women and high
living. The large and costly Château de Monte-Cristo that he built was often filled with strangers and acquaintances who took advantage of his generosity. When King Louis-Philippe was ousted in a revolt, Dumas was not looked upon favorably by the newly elected President, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. In 1851 Dumas fled to Brussels, Belgium,
to escape his creditors, and from there he traveled to Russia, where
French was the second language, and where his writings were enormously
popular. Dumas spent two years in Russia, before moving on to seek
adventure and fodder for more stories. In March 1861 the kingdom of
Italy was proclaimed, with Victor Emmanuel II as
its king. For the next three years Alexandre Dumas would be involved in
the fight for a united Italy, founding and leading a newspaper, named Indipendente, and returning to Paris in 1864. Despite
Alexandre Dumas' success and aristocratic connections, his being of
mixed race would affect him all his life. In 1843 he wrote a short
novel, Georges,
that addressed some of the issues of race and the effects of
colonialism. He once remarked to a man who insulted him about his
mixed-race background: "My
father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my
great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours
ends." In June 2005 Dumas' recently-discovered last novel, The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, went on sale in France. Within the story Dumas describes the Battle of Trafalgar, in which the death of Lord Nelson is
explained. The novel was being published serially and was almost
complete at the time of his death. A final two-and-a-half chapters were
written by modern-day Dumas scholar Claude Schopp, who based his
efforts on Dumas' pre-writing notes. Buried where he had been born, Alexandre Dumas remained in the cemetery at Villers-Cotterêts until 30 November 2002. Under orders of the French President, Jacques Chirac,
his body was exhumed, and in a televised ceremony his new coffin,
draped in a blue-velvet cloth, and flanked by four Republican Guards
(costumed as the Musketeers - Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan) was transported in a solemn procession to the Panthéon of Paris, the great mausoleum where French luminaries are interred. In his speech President Chirac said: "With
you, we were D'Artagnan, Monte Cristo, or Balsamo, riding along the
roads of France, touring battlefields, visiting palaces and
castles — with you, we dream." In that speech President Chirac acknowledged the racism that had existed, saying that a wrong had now been righted, with Alexandre Dumas enshrined alongside fellow authors Victor Hugo and Emile Zola. The
honor recognized that although France has produced many great writers,
none has been as widely read as Alexandre Dumas. His stories have been
translated into almost a hundred languages, and have inspired more than
200 motion pictures. Alexandre Dumas' home outside of Paris, the Château de Monte-Cristo, has been restored and is open to the public. The Alexandre Dumas (Paris Métro) station was renamed in his honour in 1970. |