Alexandre Dumas (born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie; 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas , was a French novelist and playwright.

His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors. Many of his historical novels of adventure were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. Since the early 20th century, his novels have been adapted into nearly 200 films. Prolific in several genres, Dumas began his career by writing plays, which were successfully produced from the first. He wrote numerous magazine articles and travel books; his published works totalled 100,000 pages. At age 14, Thomas-Alexandre was taken by his father to France, where he was given his freedom, educated in a military academy, and entered the military for what became an illustrious career.

Alexandre acquired work with Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, then as a writer, a career that led to his early success. Decades later, after the election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1851, Dumas fell from favour and left France for Belgium, where he stayed for several years. He moved to Russia for a few years and then to Italy. In 1861, he founded and published the newspaper L'Indépendant, which supported Italian unification. He returned to Paris in 1864.

English playwright Watts Phillips, who knew Dumas in his later life, described him as "the most generous, large-hearted being in the world. He also was the most delightfully amusing and egotistical creature on the face of the earth. His tongue was like a windmill – once set in motion, you would never know when he would stop, especially if the theme was himself."

Birth and family

thumb|General [[Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of Alexandre Dumas]]

thumb|upright|Alexandre Dumas, engraving by [[Antoine Maurin (painter)|Antoine Maurin]]

<!-- this is more about the early life of his father than Alexandre himself -->Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (later known as Alexandre Dumas) was born in 1802 in Villers-Cotterêts in the department of Aisne, in Picardy, France. He had two older sisters, Marie-Alexandrine (born 1794) and Louise-Alexandrine (1796–1797). Their parents were Marie-Louise Élisabeth Labouret, the daughter of an innkeeper, and Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.

Thomas-Alexandre was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), the mixed-race, natural son of the marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie (Antoine), a French nobleman and général commissaire in the artillery of the colony, and Marie-Cessette Dumas, an enslaved woman of Afro-Caribbean ancestry. The two extant primary documents that state a racial identity for Marie-Cessette Dumas refer to her as a "négresse" (a black woman) as opposed to a "mulâtresse" (a woman of visible mixed race). It is unknown whether Marie-Cessette was born in Saint-Domingue or in Africa, nor is it known from which African people she had ancestry. What is known is that, sometime after becoming estranged from his brothers, Antoine purchased Marie-Cessette and her daughter from a previous relationship for "an exorbitant amount" and made Marie-Cessette his concubine. Thomas-Alexandre was the only son born to them, but they had two or three daughters.

In 1775, following the death of both his brothers, Antoine left Saint-Domingue for France in order to claim the family estates and the title of Marquis. Shortly before his departure, he sold Marie-Cessette and their two daughters (Adolphe and Jeanette), as well as Marie-Cessette's oldest daughter Marie-Rose (whose father was a different man) to a baron who had recently come from Nantes to settle in Saint Domingue. Antoine however retained ownership of Thomas-Alexandre (his only natural son) and took the 14-year-old boy with him to France. There, Thomas-Alexandre received his freedom and a sparse education at a military school, adequate to enable him to join the French army, there being no question of the mixed-race boy being accepted as his father's heir. Thomas-Alexandre did well in the Army and was promoted to general by the age of 31, the first soldier of Afro-Antilles origin to reach that rank in the French army.

The family surname ("de la Pailleterie") was never bestowed upon Thomas-Alexandre, who therefore used "Dumas" as his surname. This is often assumed to have been his mother's surname, but in fact, the surname "Dumas" occurs only once in connection with Marie-Cessette, and that happens in Europe, when Thomas-Alexandre states, while applying for a marriage licence, that his mother's name was "Marie-Cessette Dumas". Some scholars have suggested that Thomas-Alexandre devised the surname "Dumas" for himself when he felt the need for one, and that he attributed it to his mother when convenient. "Dumas" means "of the farm" (du mas), perhaps signifying only that Marie-Cessette belonged to the farm property.

Career

thumb|upright|Alexandre Dumas by [[Achille Devéria (1829)]]

While working for Louis-Philippe, Alexandre Dumas began writing articles for magazines and plays for the theatre. As an adult, he used the surname of Dumas, as his father had done as an adult. Dumas wrote the short novel Georges (1843), which uses ideas and plots later repeated in The Count of Monte Cristo. Maquet took Dumas to court to get authorial recognition and a higher payment rate for his work. He was successful in getting more money, but not a by-line.

thumb|upright|The [[Château de Monte-Cristo in Le Port-Marly]]

Dumas's novels were so popular that they were soon translated into English and other languages. His writing earned him a great deal of money, but he was frequently insolvent, as he spent lavishly on women and sumptuous living. (Scholars have found that he had a total of 40 mistresses. Returning to Paris in 1864, he published travel books about Italy.

Despite Dumas's aristocratic background and personal success, he had to deal with discrimination related to his mixed-race ancestry. In 1843, he wrote the short novel Georges, which addressed some of the issues of race and the effects of colonialism. His response to a man who insulted him about his partial African ancestry has become famous. Dumas said:

Personal life

thumb|left|upright|Dumas in the 1860s

On 1 February 1840, Dumas married actress Ida Ferrier (born Marguerite-Joséphine Ferrand) (1811–1859). They did not have any children together.

Dumas had numerous liaisons with other women; the scholar Claude Schopp lists nearly 40 mistresses.

He was a Freemason and remained so until the day he died. He was a member of the Lodge “La Cauderet” and of the Lodge “L'Olympique".

Dumas often incorporated references to Freemasonry and the importance of brotherhood in his writing.

With Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval, Eugène Delacroix and Honoré de Balzac, Dumas was a member of the Club des Hashischins, which met monthly to take hashish at a hotel in Paris. Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo contains several references to hashish.

Death and legacy

thumb|A postal stamp of [[Georgia (country)|Georgia dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Alexandre Dumas, who visited the Caucasus in 1858–1859]]

On 5 December 1870, Dumas died at the age of 68 of natural causes, possibly a heart attack. He was buried at his birthplace of Villers-Cotterêts in the department of Aisne. His death was overshadowed by the Franco-Prussian War. Changing literary fashions decreased his popularity. In the late 20th century, scholars such as Reginald Hamel and Claude Schopp caused a critical reappraisal and new appreciation of his art, as well as finding lost works.

Researchers have continued to find Dumas works in archives, including the five-act play The Gold Thieves, found in 2002 by the scholar in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. It was published in France in 2004 by Honoré-Champion.

Frank Wild Reed (1874–1953), a New Zealand pharmacist who never visited France, amassed the greatest collection of books and manuscripts relating to Dumas outside France. The collection contains about 3,350 volumes, including some 2,000 sheets in Dumas's handwriting and dozens of French, Belgian and English first editions. The collection was donated to Auckland Libraries after his death. Reed wrote the most comprehensive bibliography of Dumas.

In 2002, for the bicentenary of Dumas's birth, French President Jacques Chirac held a ceremony honouring the author by having his ashes re-interred at the mausoleum of the Panthéon, where many French luminaries were buried. The proceedings were televised: the new coffin was draped in a blue velvet cloth and carried on a caisson flanked by four mounted Republican Guards costumed as the four Musketeers. It was transported through Paris to the Panthéon. In his speech, Chirac said:

Chirac acknowledged the racism that had existed in France and said that the re-interment in the Pantheon had been a way of correcting that wrong, as Alexandre Dumas was enshrined alongside fellow great authors Victor Hugo and Émile Zola. Chirac noted that although France has produced many great writers, none has been so widely read as Dumas. His novels have been translated into nearly 100 languages, and inspired more than 200 motion pictures.

thumb|Tomb of Alexandre Dumas at the [[Panthéon in Paris]]

In June 2005, Dumas's last novel, The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, was published in France featuring the Battle of Trafalgar. Dumas described a fictional character killing Lord Nelson (Nelson was shot and killed by an unknown sniper). Writing and publishing the novel serially in 1869, Dumas had nearly finished it before his death. It was the third part of the Sainte-Hermine trilogy. Claude Schopp, a Dumas scholar, noticed a letter in an archive in 1990 that led him to discover the unfinished work. It took him years to research it, edit the completed portions, and decide how to treat the unfinished part. Schopp finally wrote the final two-and-a-half chapters, based on the author's notes, to complete the story. Published by Éditions Phébus, it sold 60,000 copies, making it a best seller. Translated into English, it was released in 2006 as The Last Cavalier, and has been translated into other languages.

  1. The Page of the Duke of Savoy, (1855) is a sequel to The Two Dianas (1846), and it covers the struggle for supremacy between the Guises and Catherine de Médicis, the Florentine mother of the last three Valois kings of France (and wife of Henry II). The main character in this novel is Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy.
  2. The Horoscope: a romance of the reign of François II (1858), covers François II, who reigned for one year (1559–60) and died at the age of 16.

The Marie Antoinette romances

The Marie Antoinette romances comprise eight novels. The unabridged versions (normally 100 chapters or more) comprise only five books (numbers 1, 3, 4, 7 and 8); the short versions (50 chapters or less) number eight in total:

  1. Joseph Balsamo (Mémoires d'un médecin: Joseph Balsamo, 1846–48) (a.k.a. Memoirs of a Physician, Cagliostro, Madame Dubarry, The Countess Dubarry, or The Elixir of Life). Joseph Balsamo is about 1000 pages long, and is usually published in two volumes in English translations: Vol 1. Joseph Balsamo and Vol 2. Memoirs of a Physician. The long unabridged version includes the contents of book two, Andrée de Taverney; the short abridged versions usually are divided in Balsamo and Andrée de Taverney as completely different books.
  2. Andrée de Taverney, or The Mesmerist's Victim
  3. The Queen's Necklace (Le Collier de la Reine, (1849–1850)
  4. Ange Pitou (1853) (a.k.a. Storming the Bastille or Six Years Later). From this book, there are long unabridged versions which include the contents of book five, but there are many short versions that treat "The Hero of the People" as a separated volume.
  5. The Hero of the People
  6. The Royal Life Guard or The Flight of the Royal Family.
  7. The Countess de Charny (La Comtesse de Charny, 1853–1855). As with other books, there are long unabridged versions which include the contents of book six; but many short versions that leave contents in The Royal Life Guard as a separate volume.
  8. Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge (1845) (a.k.a. The Knight of the Red House, or The Knight of Maison-Rouge)

The Sainte-Hermine trilogy

:# The Companions of Jehu (Les Compagnons de Jehu, 1857)

:#The Whites and the Blues (Les Blancs et les Bleus, 1867)

:# The Knight of Sainte-Hermine (Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine, 1869). Dumas's last novel, unfinished at his death, was completed by scholar Claude Schopp and published in 2005. It was published in English in 2008 as The Last Cavalier.

Robin Hood

These were a translation of Pierce Egan the Younger's Robin Hood and Little John, originally published in England in 1838.

  1. The Prince of Thieves (Le Prince des voleurs, 1872, posthumously). About Robin Hood (and the inspiration for the 1948 film The Prince of Thieves).
  2. Robin Hood the Outlaw (Robin Hood le proscrit, 1873, posthumously). Sequel to Le Prince des voleurs

Drama

Although best known now as a novelist, Dumas first earned fame as a dramatist. His Henri III et sa cour (1829) was the first of the great Romantic historical dramas produced on the Paris stage, preceding Victor Hugo's more famous Hernani (1830). Produced at the Comédie-Française and starring the famous Mademoiselle Mars, Dumas's play was an enormous success and launched him on his career. It had 50 performances over the next year, extraordinary at the time. Dumas's works included:

  • The Hunter and the Lover (1825)
  • The Wedding and the Funeral (1826)
  • Henry III and His Court (1829)
  • Christine – Stockholm, Fontainebleau, and Rome (1830)
  • Napoleon Bonaparte or Thirty Years of the History of France (1831)
  • Antony (1831)a drama with a contemporary Byronic herois considered the first non-historical Romantic drama. It starred Mars's great rival Marie Dorval.
  • Charles VII at the Homes of His Great Vassals (Charles VII chez ses grands vassaux, 1831). This drama was adapted by the Russian composer César Cui for his opera The Saracen.
  • Teresa (1831)
  • La Tour de Nesle (1832), a historical melodrama
  • The Memories of Anthony (1835)
  • The Chronicles of France: Isabel of Bavaria (1835)
  • Kean (1836), based on the life of the notable late English actor Edmund Kean. Frédérick Lemaître played him in the production.
  • Caligula (1837)
  • Miss Belle-Isle (1837)
  • The Young Ladies of Saint-Cyr (1843)
  • The Youth of Louis XIV (1854)
  • The Son of the Night – The Pirate (1856) (with Gérard de Nerval, Bernard Lopez, and Victor Sejour)
  • The Gold Thieves (after 1857): an unpublished five-act play. It was discovered in 2002 by the Canadian scholar Reginald Hamel, who was researching in the . The play was published in France in 2004 by Honoré-Champion. Hamel said that Dumas was inspired by a novel written in 1857 by his mistress Célèste de Mogador.

Dumas Society

French historian Alain Decaux founded the "Société des Amis d'Alexandre Dumas" (The Society of Friends of Alexandre Dumas) in 1971. its president is Claude Schopp. The purpose in creating this society was to preserve the Château de Monte-Cristo, where the society is currently located. The other objectives of the Society are to bring together fans of Dumas, to develop cultural activities of the Château de Monte-Cristo, and to collect books, manuscripts, autographs and other materials on Dumas.

See also

  • Alexandre Dumas Museum
  • Black Europeans of African ancestry
  • Illegitimacy in fiction
  • Popular novel in France
  • Dumas (film) (2010)

Notes

References

Sources

  • Herald Sun: Lost Dumas play discovered
  • Lost Dumas novel hits bookshelves
  • Dumas's Works: text, concordances and frequency lists
  • The Alexandre Dumas père website, with a complete bibliography and notes about many of the works
  • 1866 Caricature of Alexandre Dumas by André Gill
  • : Freely downloadable works of Alexandre Dumas in PDF format (text mode)
  • Alexandre Dumas Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
  • Alejandro Dumas Vida y Obras First Spanish Website about Alexandre Dumas and his works.
  • Rafferty, Terrence. "All for One", The New York Times, 20 August 2006 (a review of the new translation of The Three Musketeers, )
  • The Reed Dumas collection held at Auckland Libraries
  • Alexandre Dumas's A Masked Ball audiobook with video at YouTube
  • Alexandre Dumas's A Masked Ball audiobook at Libsyn
  • posthumous article in The Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News 17 November 1883