Alexander Dumas

By Michael Ross

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0715377582
• ISBN13: 9780715377581
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: David & Charles
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.1" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Larger than life

This review refers to three books: Alexandre Dumas by Michael Ross (ISBN 0715377582), The Titans by Andre Maurois (ISBN 0837161517) and The King of Paris by Guy Endore (ASIN B000BW4094). All are highly recommended for information on Dumas and his age and for entertainment value. We know him best as author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, but Alexandre Dumas' greatest creation was his own life. He had a saying: "Old age begins when daring dies". Like Oscar Wilde, Dumas put his genius into his life and his talent into his work. Dumas was a larger than life character. A six foot three (1.9m) part negro, he was an expert swordsman, superb calligrapher, fluent linguist, brilliant conversationalist, ardent Republican, collector of medals and Royal orders, organiser of his infamous 'fiction factory', outrageous plagiarist, spendthrift whose complex financial affairs might have inspired his contemporary Balzac, world traveller, gourmet cook, lover whose series of affairs scandalised all of Paris till he was well into his sixties, world famous playwright, yet more famous novelist, and possessed the dramatic instinct to a most perfect degree, both in his life and his works. Despite his defects and excesses he possessed the ability to inspire affection in all whom he met. He was involved in most of the political events of his time. Dumas as a boy of thirteen saw Napoleon arrive, and leave, France during the Hundred Days; in the July Revolution of 1830, in a musketeer like flourish, he single-handedly took the garrison at Soissons Arsenal ; he bankrupted himself in support of the 1848 revolution; in a red shirt he marched into Naples at the head of Garibaldi's volunteers in September 1860. Dumas disseminated the ideas of the Romantic revolution to millions throughout the world. This was a man who assimilated the influences of Byron, Scott, Fenimore Cooper and Schiller, counted Victor Hugo, Berlioz, Liszt, Rossini and Delacroix as his friends, knew Gérard de Nerval, Frédérick Lemaître, Musset, Vigny and the Goncourts well and for three amazing years, 1844-47, was the 'King of Paris', with a worldwide reputation which made him one of the most popular authors who ever lived. Michael Ross' biography does a good job of sketching in most of this. It is a frustrating aspect of Ross' book that much of Dumas' relations with contemporaries is glossed over. Correspondingly more detail is given of his early life which occupies a large part of the text: Ross follows Dumas' own Mes Memoires for much of this. He concentrates on seminal dates, and illustrates them with lively anecdotes. Dumas attending his first play in Paris and meeting the critic Nodier, who was subsequently thrown out of the theatre for booing his own play. The first night of Henri III in 1829, the popularity of which changed Dumas' life. The year of 1844, which saw the publication of both Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Ross doesn't attempt to deal in depth with Dumas'