Author: Dumas, Alexander
Biography:
DUMAS, Alexander (1802-70: EB)
Alexander (Alexandre) Dumas was a French author who made his name writing plays and historical novels. His plays were written in prose but the English translation of his Henri III et sa Cour (1829), by Francis Levenson Gower (q.v.), is in blank verse. Dumas was born in Villers-Cotterêts, Aisne, France, on 24 July 1802. His parents were Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, a general in Napoleon’s army who assumed the name of Dumas in 1786, and his wife Marie Louise Labouret. Dumas moved to Paris as a young man and sought to make a living in the theatre, writing melodramatic but quite successful historical plays. His turn to writing historical novels—including Les Trois Mousquetaires (1844) and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1844-45)—made his name. The novels also made his fortune but he spent lavishly; his country estate, Château de Monte-Cristo, had to be sold in 1848 when he was short of money. On 1 Feb. 1840 he married Marguerite-Joséphine Ferrand, an actor whose stage name was Ida Ferrier. They had no children but Dumas fathered several outside the marriage; a son, Alexandre Dumas, became a writer like his father. For political reasons Dumas spent some years living abroad but he returned to France in 1864. He died at Puy, near Dieppe, on 5 Dec. 1870 and was buried first at Dieppe before being moved, in 1872, to Villers-Cotterêts. In 2002 his body was moved again, this time to the crypt in the Panthéon in Paris where it was buried beside the grave of Victor Hugo. The Château de Monte-Cristo is now a museum dedicated to Dumas. (EB; Los Angeles Times 1 Dec. 2002) SR