Summary: Alexandre Dumas senior ('père', born July 24, 1802, died December 5, 1870); French author of romance and adventure literature, most famous for the Three Musketeers series, which includes the Man in the Iron Mask, and for the Count of Monte Cristo. His son, Alexandre Dumas junior (fils, born July 27, 1824, died November 17, 1895); romantic novelist and playwright most famous for La Dame aux Camélias.
Alexandre Dumas was born in
1802, at
Villers-Cotterêts, just north of the River
Marne, the illegitimate son of a
Napoleonic
general named
Thomas Alexandre Dumas (1762-1806). His paternal grandparents were from
Santo Domingo, which is now part of
Haiti.
Marie-Cessette, Dumas' grandmother, was an
Afro-Carribean former
slave. After his father's
death in
1806, Dumas' family lived in poverty. In
1823, after a stint as a
notary's
clerk, he went to
Paris to find work. Due to his
exquisite calligraphic skills, he gained employment in the
household of the
Duc d'Orléans, who would subsequently become the
Orleanist King Louis Philippe. Whilst in the employ of the
Duke, he became a playwright. He also had an affair with a
dressmaker named
Marie-Catherine Lebay, to whom a son, Alexandre Dumas
fils, was born in
1824. (See below)
Dumas' first successful work was the play
Henri III et sa Cour (Henry III and his court), produced in
1829 at the
Comedie Française. Among his later plays is the outstanding
melodrama,
La Tour de Nesle (The Tower of Nesle), produced in
1832. He also founded and wrote for several magazines, and wrote books about his various travels.
But it was as the author of around 250 novels that Dumas gained his greatest fame. A pioneer of the
roman feuilleton or serial novel, he collaborated with the historian
Auguste Maquet to fill the pages of the newspapers
Presse and
Constitutionel with
swashbuckling adventure stories. When his patron, Louis Philippe, became king in
18301, Dumas benefitted massively from the relaxation of press
censorship and consequent popularity of newspaper publishing.
In
1832 Dumas caught
cholera in the great
epidemic, and spent some time recuperating in
Italy. In
1840 he married the
actress Ida Ferrier, who had become his
mistress. The marriage was not a success, and Dumas spent his wife's entire
dowry. They separated.
Dumas spent two years in
Brussels from
1855 to
1857, in exile
2. He visited
Russia in
1858. In
1860 he went to
Italy again, this time to support
Garibaldi and be keeper of the
museums in
Naples. In
1864 he came back to Paris, still in debt. His fortune, earned from his writing, had largely been spent building the
Chateau de Montecristo, a large country house outside the
capital.
Although Dumas was of
mixed race, he did not dwell on the fact very often. Nevertheless, his works, particularly
The Count of Monte Cristo with its themes of
false imprisonment and
liberation, proved popular with
African Americans at the time.
On
December 5,
1870, Dumas had a
stroke and died at
Puys, near
Dieppe. He was buried at Villers-Cotterêts - a fact which upset fans who believed him deserving of a
state funeral like that which the more pious and highbrow
Victor Hugo got, and a burial in the
Pantheon. A statue was put up to him by the townsfolk, but was destroyed by the occupying
Nazi forces during WWII. This year (2002), it is planned to
exhume Dumas' remains and finally transfer them to the Pantheon. Members of the 'three Dumas' society (dedicated to Dumas' father, and the two Alexandres) object to this, as they now rather like the celebrity that Dumas' grave lends to the town. An offer has been made to restore the lost statue, though.
Most famous works:
- Les Frères Corse - The Corsican Brothers, 1844
- Les Trois Mousquetaires - The Three Musketeers, 1844
- Vingt Ans Aprés - Twenty Years After, 1845
- Le Comte de Monte-Cristo - The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844-45
- Dix Ans Plus Tard, ou Le Vicomte de Bragelonne - Ten Years Later, or The Viscount of Bragelonne, 1848-50 - usually divided into The Viscount of Bragelonne, Louise de la Valliere and The Man in the Iron Mask
- La Reine Margot - Queen Margot, or Marguerite de Valois, 1845
1: An event which drove the
Bourbon loyalist mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy out of the country.
2: For
tax or
debt reasons, I believe.
Thanks to
Spuunbenda for locating Dumas' birthplace, which is north-east of Paris and west of
Rheims.
Alexander Dumas
fils spent much of his early life in
boarding schools, at his father's expense, where he was unhappy because of taunts concerning his illegitimacy. While living at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye with his father, young Alexandre met the
courtesan Marie Duplessis, who inspired the younger Dumas' great work,
La Dame aux Camélias. Marie died of
tuberculosis in
1847. The novel appeared the following year. In 1853,
Giuseppe Verdi based his
opera La Traviata on the work.
Unlike his father, the younger Dumas was a strict moralist, and was opposed to the emancipation of women. He made this and other political points in the pointed prefaces to his works.
Alexandre Dumas
fils died at
Marly-le-Roi on
November 27,
1895.