Quick Facts
- NAME: Alexandre Dumas
- OCCUPATION: Journalist, Author, Playwright
- BIRTH DATE: July 24, 1802
- DEATH DATE: December 05, 1870
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Villers-Cotterêts, France
- PLACE OF DEATH: Puys, France
- Nickname: Dumas père
Best Known For
Alexandre Dumas was a 19th-century French novelist and playwright whose best known works are The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.
Alexandre Dumas. (2012). Biography.com. Retrieved 10:14, Feb 03, 2012 from http://www.biography.com/people/alexandre-dumas-9280725
Alexandre Dumas [Internet]. 2012. http://www.biography.com/people/alexandre-dumas-9280725, February 03
" Alexandre Dumas." 2012. Biography.com 03 Feb 2012, 10:14 http://www.biography.com/people/alexandre-dumas-9280725
' Alexandre Dumas', Biography.com,(2012) http://www.biography.com/people/alexandre-dumas-9280725 [accessed Feb 03, 2012]
" Alexandre Dumas," Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/alexandre-dumas-9280725 (accessed Feb 03, 2012).
Alexandre Dumas [Internet]. Biography.com; 2012 [cited 2012 Feb 03]. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/alexandre-dumas-9280725.
Alexandre Dumas, http://www.biography.com/people/alexandre-dumas-9280725 (last visited Feb 03, 2012).
Alexandre Dumas, http://www.biography.com/people/alexandre-dumas-9280725 (last visited Feb 03, 2012).
Synopsis
Alexandre Dumas was born on July 24, 1802 in Villers-Cotterêts, Aisne, France. He moved to Paris and worked in the household of the future King Louis-Philippe. He became a successful playwright and then historical novelist, writing The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. His success led to an expensive lifestyle that he had to write furiously to support. Dumas died in 1870.
Profile
(born July 24, 1802, Villers-Cotterts, Aisne, Fr.—died Dec. 5, 1870, Puys, near Dieppe) one of the most prolific and most popular French authors of the 19th century. Without ever attaining indisputable literary merit, Dumas succeeded in gaining a great reputation first as a dramatist and then as a historical novelist, especially for such works as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. His memoirs, which, with a mixture of candour, mendacity, and boastfulness, recount the events of his extraordinary life, also provide a unique insight into French literary life during the Romantic period. He was the father (pre) of the dramatist and novelist Alexandre Dumas, called Dumas fils.
Dumas's father, Thomas-Alexandre Davy de La Pailleterie—born out of wedlock to the marquis de La Pailleterie and Marie Cessette Dumas, a black slave of Santo Domingo—was a common soldier under the ancien régime who assumed the name Dumas in 1786. He later became a general in Napoleon's army. The family fell on hard times, however, especially after General Dumas's death in 1806, and the young Alexandre went to Paris to attempt to make a living as a lawyer. He managed to obtain a post in the household of the Duke d'Orléans, the future King Louis-Philippe, but tried his fortune in the theatre. He made contact with the actor Franois-Joseph Talma and with the young poets who were to lead the Romantic movement.
Dumas's plays, when judged from a modern viewpoint, are crude, brash, and melodramatic, but they were received with rapture in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Henri III et sa cour (1829) portrayed the French Renaissance in garish colours; Napoléon Bonaparte (1831) played its part in making a legend of the recently dead emperor; and in Antony (1831) Dumas brought a contemporary drama of adultery and honour to the stage.
Though he continued to write plays, Dumas next turned his attention to the historical novel, often working with collaborators (especially Auguste Maquet). Considerations of probability or historical accuracy generally were ignored, and the psychology of the characters was rudimentary. Dumas's main interest was the creation of an exciting story set against a colourful background of history, usually the 16th or 17th century.
The best known of his works are Les Trois Mousquetaires (published 1844, performed 1845; The Three Musketeers), a romance about four swashbuckling heroes in the age of Cardinal Richelieu; Vingt ans aprs (1845; “Twenty Years After”); Le Comte de Monte Cristo
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