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Alexandre Dumas, père, born Dumas Davy de la 
Pailleterie (July 24, 1802 – December 5, 1870), is 
best known for his numerous historical novels of 
high adventure which have made him the most widely 
read French author in the world. Many of his 
novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo and 
the D'Artagnan Romances, were serialized, and he 
also wrote plays, magazine articles, and was a 
prolific correspondent. Dumas was a quadroon, and 
suffered from racism during his lifetime.

Origins and early life
While his grandfather, Marquis Antoine-Alexandre 
Davy de la Pailleterie, served the government of 
France as General Commissaire in the Artillery in 
the colony of Saint Domingue (now Haiti), he married 
Marie-Céssette Dumas, a black slave. In 1762, she 
gave birth to his father, Thomas-Alexandre, and 
died soon thereafter.

When the Marquis and his young mulatto son returned 
to Normandy, slavery still existed, so the boy 
suffered as a result of being half black. In 1786, 
Thomas-Alexandre joined the French army, but to 
protect the aristocratic family's reputation, he 
enlisted using his mother's maiden name. Following 
the Revolution in France, the Marquis lost his 
estates, but Thomas-Alexandre Dumas distinguished 
himself as a capable and daring soldier in the 
revolutionary army, rising through the ranks to 
become a General by the age of 31.

General Dumas married Marie-Louise Elizabeth Labouret 
and on July 24, 1802 and in Villers-Cotterêts, Aisne, 
near Paris, France, she gave birth to their son, 
Alexandre Dumas, who would become France's most 
commercially successful author. General Dumas died 
in 1806 when Alexandre was only four, leaving a nearly 
impoverished mother to raise him under difficult 
conditions. Although Marie-Louise was unable to 
provide her son with much in the way of education, 
it did not hinder young Alexandre's love of books, 
and he read everything he could get his hands on. 
Growing up, his mother's stories of his father's brave 
military deeds during the glory years of Napoleon 
spawned Alexandre's vivid imagination for adventure 
and heroes. Although poor, the family still had the 
father's distinguished reputation and aristocratic 
connections and after the restoration of the monarchy, 
twenty-year-old Alexandre Dumas moved to Paris where 
he obtained employment at the Palais Royal in the 
office of the powerful duc d'Orléans.


Literary career
While working in Paris, Dumas began to write 
articles for magazines as well as plays for the 
theatre. In 1829 his first solo play, Henry III 
and his Court, was produced, meeting with great 
public acclaim. The following year his second play, 
Christine, proved equally popular and as a result, 
he was financially able to work full time at 
writing. However, in 1830, he participated in the 
revolution that ousted King Charles X and replaced 
him on the throne with Dumas' former employer, the 
duc d'Orléans, who would rule as Louis-Philippe, 
the Citizen King.

Until the mid 1830s, life in France remained 
unsettled with sporadic riots by disgruntled 
Republicans and impoverished urban workers seeking 
change. As life slowly returned to normal, the 
nation began to industrialize and with an improving 
economy combined with the end of press censorship, 
the times turned out to be very rewarding for the 
skills of Alexandre Dumas.

After writing more successful plays, he turned his 
efforts to novels. Although attracted to an 
extravagant lifestyle, and always spending more 
than he earned, Dumas proved to be a very astute 
business marketer. With high demand from newspapers 
for serial novels, in 1838, he simply rewrote one 
of his plays to create his first serial novel. 
Titled "Le Capitaine Paul," it led to his forming 
a production studio that turned out hundreds of 
stories, all subject to his personal input and 
direction.

In 1840, he married an actress, Ida Ferrier, but 
continued with his numerous liaisons with other 
women, fathering at least three illegitimate children. 
One of those children, a son named after him, would 
follow in his footsteps, also becoming a successful 
novelist and playwright. Because of their same name 
and occupation, to distinguish them, one is referred 
to as Alexandre Dumas père, (French for father) the 
other as Alexandre Dumas, fils (French for son).

Alexandre Dumas, père, wrote stories and historical 
chronicles of high adventure that captured the 
imagination of the French public who eagerly waited 
to purchase the continuing sagas. A few of these 
works are:

the D'Artagnan Romances: 
The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousqetaires, 1844) 
Twenty Years After (Vingt Ans Après, 1845) 
The Vicomte de Bragelonne (Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, 
ou Dix ans plus tard, 1847) -- when published in 
English it was usually split into three parts, of 
which the last part (which deals with the Man in the 
Iron Mask) is the best-known 
The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846) 
The Regent's Daughter (1845) 
The Two Dianas (1846) 
the Valois romances 
Queen Margot (1845) 
La Dame de Monsoreau (1846) 
The Forty-Five Guardsmen (1847) 
the Marie Antoinette romances: 
Joseph Balsamo (1846–1848) (aka "Memoirs of a 
physician", "Cagliostro", "Madame Dubarry", "The 
Countess Dubarry", or "The Elixir of Life") 
The Queen's Necklace (1849–1850) 
Ange Pitou (1853) (aka "Storming the Bastille", or 
"Six Years Later") 
The Countess de Charny (1853–1855) (aka "Andrée de 
Taverney", or "The Mesmerist's Victim") 
The Black Tulip (1850) 
The Nutcracker (1844) -- a revision of Hoffmann's 
story, later adapted by Tchaikovsky as a ballet 
The Gold Thieves (after 1857) -- a play that was 
lost, and rediscovered by the Canadian Reginald 
Hamel researcher in the Bibliothèque nationale de 
France in 2004 
The Knight of Sainte-Hermine (Le Chevalier de 
Sainte-Hermine, 1869) -- the novel was his last 
major work and was lost until its rediscovery by 
Claude Schopp was announced in 2005 
His writing earned him a great deal of money, but 
Dumas was frequently broke and in debt as a result 
of spending lavishly on countless women and high 
living. A soft touch, the huge and costly château 
he built was constantly filled with strangers who 
took advantage of his generosity. With King 
Louis-Philippe ousted in another revolt, he was not 
looked upon as favorably by the newly elected 
President, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and in 
1851 Dumas finally had to flee to Brussels, Belgium 
to escape his creditors. From there he traveled to 
Russia where French was the second language and his 
writings were also enormously popular.

Dumas spent two years in Russia before moving on to 
seek adventure and fodder for more stories. In 
March of 1861, the kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, 
with Victor Emmanuel II as its king. For the next 
three years, Alexandre Dumas would be involved in 
the fight for a united Italy, returning to Paris 
in 1864.

Despite Alexandre Dumas' success and aristocratic 
connections, his being of mixed-blood would affect 
him all his life. In 1843, he wrote a short novel, 
Georges, that addressed some of the issues of race 
and the effects of colonialism. Nevertheless, 
racist attitudes impacted his rightful position 
in France's history long after his death on 
December 5, 1870.


Posthumous recognition
Buried in the place where he had been born, Alexandre 
Dumas remained in the cemetery at Villers-Cotterêts 
until November 30, 2002. Under orders of the French 
President, Jacques Chirac, his body was exhumed and 
in a televised ceremony, his new coffin, draped in 
a blue-velvet cloth and flanked by four men costumed 
as the Musketeers: Athos, Porthos, Aramis and 
D'Artagnan, was transported in a solemn procession 
to the Panthéon of Paris, the great mausoleum where 
French luminaries are interred.

In his speech, President Chirac said: "With you, we 
were D'Artagnan, Monte Cristo or Balsamo, riding 
along the roads of France, touring battlefields, 
visiting palaces and castles -- with you, we dream." 
In an interview following the ceremony, President 
Chirac acknowledged the racism that had existed, 
saying that a wrong had now been righted with Alexandre 
Dumas enshrined alongside fellow authors Victor Hugo 
and Voltaire.

The honor recognized that although France has produced 
many great writers, none have been as widely read as 
Alexandre Dumas. His stories have been translated into 
almost a hundred languages, and has inspired more than
200 motion pictures.

Alexandre Dumas' home outside of Paris, the Château 
Monte Cristo, has been restored and is open to the 
public.