Alexandre Dumas (1803-1870), the prolific French author of plays, popular romances, and historical novels, wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.

Alexandre Dumas is generally called Dumas père to distinguish him from his illustrious son Alexandre (known as Dumas fils), who was also a dramatist and novelist. The son of a Creole general of the French Revolutionary armies, Dumas was brought up by his mother in straitened circumstances after his father's death. While still young, he began to write "vaudeville" plays (light musical comedies) and then historical plays in collaboration with a friend, Adolphe de Leuven. Historical themes, as well as the use of a collaborator, were to be permanent aspects of Dumas's style throughout his career.

After reading William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Friedrich von Schiller, and Lord Byron, and while employed as a secretary to the Duke of Orléans...