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Alexandre Dumas Biography

Writer

Alexandre Dumas wrote the classic adventure novel The Three Musketeers and some of the most famous and popular stories in French literature. Beginning in 1844 he had a string of brilliantly successful books, publishing The Three Musketeers (1844, first printed in serial form) and following it with The Count of Monte Cristo (1845), Twenty Years After (1845) and The Black Tulip (1850), among many others. A great celebrity writer of the day, he was almost as famous for his reckless spending and lavish lifestyle, and he was frequently in debt. In his last days he was supported by his illegitimate son, the author Alexandre Dumas the Younger.

Extra credit: Dumas and his son are often referred to as Dumas peré (father) and Dumas fils (son)... Alexandre Dumas was one-quarter black; his grandfather had married a slave while serving as a government official in what is now Haiti.

Other adventure novelists of the 1800s include Sir Walter Scott (of Ivanhoe fame) and H. Rider Haggard (creator of Allan Quatermain).