Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas, known as Dumas père to distinguish him from his son of the same name, was a French novelist and playwright who lived from 1802 to 1870. He wrote in French, and his works have been translated into nearly a hundred languages, which makes him one of the most widely read French authors. A leading figure of French Romanticism, he is remembered above all for adventure fiction and historical novels, genres in which he reached a readership that has lasted well beyond his lifetime.

He was born in Villers-Cotterêts, in the Aisne department, as Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie. His father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was the son of a French nobleman and an enslaved woman of African descent in the colony of Saint-Domingue, today Haiti. Thomas-Alexandre was taken to France as a teenager, trained in a military academy and rose to the rank of general during the Revolution, an remarkable advance for a man of mixed race. That family story, with its blend of privilege and exclusion, shaped the imagination of his son, who would later make his father's heroic but little-known life part of his own legend.

Dumas had little formal schooling. He worked as a messenger, a tobacco seller and a clerk in a notary's office, and spent much of his youth hunting and courting. After a first trip to Paris in 1822, he settled in the capital in 1823 and took a post as a copyist for the Duke of Orléans, thanks to his fine handwriting. He kept educating himself while writing short theatre pieces. His career took off in 1829 and 1830 with plays that were staged successfully, and in 1831 Antony brought his first great triumph. He is regarded as one of the leading figures who brought Romantic drama to the French stage, with proud and rebellious heroes at its centre.

From the 1830s he turned increasingly to the serial novel, published in newspapers at prices ordinary readers could afford. His gift for pace, humour and adventure won him a vast audience. Dumas relied on many collaborators, among them the historian Auguste Maquet, who supplied research and worked on several of his best-known novels. The exact division of labour is clearer today, though the final shape and narrative voice of these books are largely Dumas's own. His novels, closely tied to the history of France and Europe, combine intrigue with strong characters and lively dialogue.

His life was as dramatic as his writing. He spent generously and well beyond his means, and was almost always in debt. He had the Monte-Cristo house built at Le Port-Marly, which he had to sell shortly afterwards. After Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in 1851, he fell out of favour and went into exile in Belgium, later travelling to Russia and Italy. In Italy he backed the country's unification through a newspaper. He returned to Paris in 1864 and died in Dieppe in 1870.

His legacy is twofold. His novels remain widely read and have inspired hundreds of film and television adaptations. His production model, with workshops of collaborators and serial publication, anticipated a form of literary industry that later became common. His figure, admired and debated in equal measure, still raises the question of how far a book signed by one author is the work of one hand.