His father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, born in Santo Domingo (now Haiti), was the son of a French marquis and a slave woman of African descent.

His mother, Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Labouret, was the daughter of an innkeeper. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATIONĭumas was born July 24, 1802, in Villers-Cotterets, a small town in France. Dumas is referred to as Alexandre Dumas père in order to distinguish him from his son Alexandre Dumas fils ('the younger'), who was also a novelist and playwright. In the late twentieth century, a number of adaptations from Dumas' works were published as children's texts, among them Captain Pamphile's Adventures (1971), When Pierrot Was Young (1975), and The Nutcracker (1977). Hoffman, was the basis for The Nutcracker, the perennial Christmas ballet by Russian composer Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky. His 1844 short story for children 'L'Histoire d'un Casse-Noisette,' adapted from a story by E. A long excerpted section of his novel Le vicomte de Bragelonne (1848-1850) has been published separately as The Man in the Iron Mask. However, several excerpts, abridgements, and adaptations of Dumas' works are more familiar to modern readers. His prolific output over the course of a long career includes more than three hundred published titles, the majority of which have sunk into obscurity. Dumas is often disparagingly compared to his contemporaries Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac, who have maintained the highest literary accolades while Dumas has been relegated to the status of popular-but not literary-novelist and dramatist. Dumas is credited with popularizing the French historical romance in the mid-nineteenth century and has been called the French Walter Scott (whose Waverly novels set in old England served as an important influence). Among his many novels of adventure and romance, often set in a context of French history and featuring historically real figures, the best known to modern readers are Les trois mousquetaires (1844 The Three Musketeers) and Le comte de Monte-Cristo (1844-1845 The Count of Monte-Cristo), both of which have been adapted to film in numerous productions. INTRODUCTIONĭumas père ('the elder') has remained one of the most enduringly popular novelists of the past two centuries. The following entry presents an overview of Dumas's career through 2006. French novelist, playwright, essayist, short-story writer, nonfiction writer, autobiographer, and author of juvenile fiction.

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