48 Fun Facts About Alexandre Dumas

Who is the hero of The Count of Monte Cristo?

Edmond Dantès, a young Marseille sailor, is betrayed on the eve of his wedding to Mercédès, imprisoned for fourteen years, and returns as the Count to take revenge.

In which prison is the hero of Monte Cristo locked up?

Dantès is held for fourteen years in the Château d'If, a real sixteenth-century fortress on a small island in the bay of Marseille.

Which fellow prisoner educates Dantès and reveals the treasure?

Abbé Faria, the 'mad priest' in the next cell, tunnels through to Dantès, teaches him languages and science, and bequeaths him the Spada treasure hidden on Monte Cristo.

What were the names of the three musketeers who befriend d'Artagnan?

Athos, Porthos and Aramis, known as 'the three inseparables', each challenge d'Artagnan to a duel on the same afternoon before becoming his closest friends.

From which region of France does d'Artagnan set out for Paris?

d'Artagnan leaves Gascony in April 1625 on an old yellow nag, carrying his father's letter to Monsieur de Tréville, captain of the musketeers and a fellow Gascon.

Who is the villainous spy working for Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers?

Milady de Winter, Richelieu's agent, is branded with a fleur-de-lis and turns out to be Athos's former wife; she poisons Constance Bonacieux and is executed at the novel's end.

In which newspaper was The Three Musketeers first serialised in 1844?

The Three Musketeers ran as a serial in Le Siècle from March to July 1844 and was published in book form the same year.

Which 1700 work by Courtilz de Sandras inspired The Three Musketeers?

Courtilz de Sandras's Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan (1700) gave Dumas the names Athos, Porthos and Aramis; Dumas claimed he had found the story in a recovered manuscript.

Which siege do d'Artagnan and his friends fight at in The Three Musketeers?

At the siege of La Rochelle (1627–28) the four friends breakfast in the Saint-Gervais bastion under enemy fire to win a bet and talk in private.

Which English duke does Milady have assassinated?

Milady, held prisoner at Portsmouth, seduces her Puritan jailer John Felton into stabbing the Duke of Buckingham, echoing Felton's real assassination of the duke in 1628.

What is the final part of The Vicomte de Bragelonne usually called in English?

English editions split the huge novel into three or four volumes; the last, The Man in the Iron Mask, follows the twin-brother plot around Louis XIV and the prisoner Philippe.

Which novel is the direct sequel to The Three Musketeers?

Twenty Years After (1845) reunites the four friends during the Fronde; the trilogy then closes with The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later.

Who was Dumas's best-known ghostwriting collaborator?

Auguste Maquet drafted outlines and chapters for The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo; Dumas rewrote them in his own voice and signed the books alone.

What did Maquet win when he took Dumas to court?

Maquet won more money but no by-line: the court upheld Dumas as sole author while ordering him to share proceeds. Maquet's full role surfaced only in the late twentieth century.

In which French colony was Dumas's father born?

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was born in 1762 at Jérémie in Saint-Domingue, present-day Haiti, to a French marquis and Marie-Cessette Dumas, an enslaved African woman.

What nickname did Austrian troops give General Dumas in 1797?

Napoleon called him the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol for holding a bridge alone.

Where was General Dumas imprisoned for two years after leaving Egypt in 1799?

His leaking ship put in at Taranto, in the Kingdom of Naples, then at war with France; he was held in a fortress dungeon from 1799 until 1801.

What does the surname Dumas probably mean?

It may simply have signified that Marie-Cessette belonged to the farm property.

In which town was Dumas born and first buried?

Dumas was born at Villers-Cotterêts in the Aisne on 24 July 1802 and buried there in 1872; locals objected when the state later moved his remains to the Panthéon.

For which future king did the young Dumas work before becoming a writer?

From 1823 Dumas worked as a clerk in the Palais-Royal secretariat of the Duke of Orléans, who became King Louis-Philippe, the 'Citizen King', after the July Revolution of 1830.

What was Dumas's first play, produced to acclaim in 1829?

It was the first great Romantic historical drama on the Paris stage, a year before Hugo's Hernani.

Which English actor's life inspired an 1836 Dumas play that bears his name?

Kean, ou Désordre et génie (1836) dramatises the life of the English tragedian Edmund Kean; Frédérick Lemaître created the title role at the Théâtre des Variétés.

What was Dumas's first serial novel, published in 1836?

Le Capitaine Paul, partly based on John Paul Jones, followed in 1838.

Which naval officer inspired a Dumas serial novel of 1838?

Le Capitaine Paul (1838), Dumas's reworking of his own play Paul Jones, fictionalises the Scottish-born American naval hero John Paul Jones as a continuation of Fenimore Cooper's The Pilot.

Dumas's 1840 novel about the Decembrist revolt was banned in which country?

Russia banned the novel: Tsar Nicholas I objected to its portrait of the Decembrist exile Annenkov and his devoted wife, and Dumas could only visit Russia in 1858, after the tsar's death.

Augustin Grisier, who co-wrote an 1840 novel with Dumas, was Dumas's what?

Augustin Grisier was Dumas's fencing master and lent his name to Le Maître d'armes (1840); Dumas mentions him respectfully in The Count of Monte Cristo and The Corsican Brothers.

Roughly how many pages did Dumas publish in his lifetime?

Dumas's output is usually put at about 100,000 pages of novels, plays, travel books and journalism, helped by a studio of collaborators working under his direction.

What was the name of the country house Dumas built outside Paris in 1846?

Dumas built the Château de Monte-Cristo at Port-Marly, west of Paris, in 1846–47 and lost it to his creditors within three years; the estate later became a museum.

About how many mistresses have scholars attributed to Dumas?

Biographers count about 40 mistresses; by them Dumas fathered at least four children, including Alexandre Dumas fils, author of La Dame aux camélias.

To which country did Dumas flee at the end of 1851?

Dumas settled in Brussels, Belgium, in December 1851 after Louis-Napoléon's coup d'état, which also put distance between him and his Paris creditors; he returned in 1853.

Which Italian hero did Dumas befriend while supporting unification?

Dumas joined Giuseppe Garibaldi's 1860 expedition to Sicily and Naples, buying rifles for the Redshirts; Garibaldi made him director of excavations and museums in Naples.

Which newspaper did Dumas found in Naples while supporting Garibaldi?

L'Indépendant (L'Indipendente), launched in Naples in 1860, backed Garibaldi and Italian unification; Dumas ran it for about three years before returning to Paris in 1864.

Dumas's famous retort to a racist insult ended with what line?

Challenged about his ancestry, Dumas replied that his father was a mulatto, his grandfather a Negro and his great-grandfather a monkey: 'my family starts where yours ends.'

Which Parisian society did Dumas share with Hugo, Baudelaire and Balzac?

The Club des Hashischins met monthly at the Hôtel de Lauzun on the Île Saint-Louis to take hashish; in Monte Cristo the Count offers the drug to Franz d'Épinay.

Which actress had a much-publicised affair with the elderly Dumas around 1866?

Adah Isaacs Menken, the American star of Mazeppa and more than thirty years his junior, was photographed embracing Dumas in 1866; the pictures caused a scandal in Paris.

Which war overshadowed Dumas's death in December 1870?

Dumas died on 5 December 1870 at his son's house near Dieppe, aged 68, while the Franco-Prussian War raged and Paris lay under Prussian siege.

In which year were Dumas's remains moved to the Panthéon?

President Jacques Chirac had Dumas's remains transferred to the Panthéon on 30 November 2002, marking the bicentenary of his birth.

Dumas's coffin was escorted to the Panthéon by Republican Guards dressed as what?

Four Republican Guards costumed as Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan — the four Musketeers — escorted the coffin into the Panthéon, while Chirac's speech invoked d'Artagnan, Monte Cristo and Balsamo.

Dumas's last, unfinished novel, published in 2005, features which battle?

In The Knight of Sainte-Hermine the hero fires the musket shot that kills Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805; the novel was serialised in 1869 and rediscovered more than a century later.

Which scholar completed The Knight of Sainte-Hermine from Dumas's notes?

Claude Schopp, the Dumas specialist who rediscovered the 1869 serial, wrote the final two and a half chapters; the English edition appeared as The Last Cavalier.

In which year was Dumas's Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine published?

The Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine appeared in 1873, three years after Dumas's death; he had delivered the manuscript to the publisher Alphonse Lemerre in 1870.

Dumas's 1844 tale Histoire d'un casse-noisette was a revision of which author's story?

Dumas reworked E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 tale Nussknacker und Mausekönig; Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker was based on Dumas's gentler French version.

Which theatre did Dumas found in Paris in the 1840s?

Dumas opened the Théâtre Historique on the Boulevard du Temple in February 1847 to stage his own dramas; the building later housed the Théâtre Lyrique.

Which New Zealand pharmacist amassed the largest Dumas collection outside France?

Frank Wild Reed, a Whangarei pharmacist, built a Dumas collection of about 3,350 volumes that passed to Auckland Libraries after his death in 1953.

Which real shoemaker's story of revenge partly inspired The Count of Monte Cristo?

Picaud was falsely accused by three jealous friends in Nîmes in 1807.

The Count of Monte Cristo first appeared in which publication, in 18 parts?

The Count of Monte Cristo ran in the Journal des Débats from August 1844 to January 1846 in eighteen instalments; early editions spelled the title Monte Christo.

What number did the governor of the Château d'If call Dantès instead of his name?

Dantès became simply Number 34 — the governor found it tedious to learn real names — while Abbé Faria in the neighbouring cell was Number 27.

When was a Paris Metro station named after Dumas?

The line 2 station Bagnolet was renamed Alexandre Dumas in 1970, marking the centenary of his death.