Alexandre Dumas

Dumas was born in Villers-Cotterêts in 1802, the son of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a celebrated officer of mixed French and Saint-Domingue ancestry whose career collapsed under Napoleon. His father's death left the family poor. With little formal education but a beautiful hand and an appetite for the theatre, the young Dumas went to Paris, found clerical work in the household of the future Louis-Philippe, and wrote his way onto the stage. Henri III et sa cour made him famous in 1829, before the historical novels began.

He wrote at industrial speed and did not write alone. Auguste Maquet researched and drafted structures for many of the great serials, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo; Dumas supplied invention, dialogue, expansion and the name that sold newspapers. Their partnership later ended in lawsuits over money and credit. The system was collaborative, but the voice—headlong, theatrical, generous with incident—was unmistakably his.

Dumas earned fortunes and spent larger ones on travel, feasts, newspapers, political adventures and the Château de Monte-Cristo he built outside Paris. He also met racism openly and repeatedly in French public life, answering one insult about his ancestry with famous wit. He died in 1870 at his son's house near Dieppe. In 2002 his remains were transferred to the Panthéon, a national honor delayed for more than a century.