SOURCE: Foreword to Fernande: The Story of a Courtesan, by Alexandre Dumas, translated by A. Craig Bell, Robert Hale, 1988, pp. 5-8.

In the following essay, Bell provides a brief examination of the influences behind Femande, Dumas's story of an upper-class prostitute.

To the reader who knows only the Dumas of the historical romances this naturalistic novel of contemporary Parisian society with a courtesan as its 'heroine' will come as a surprise, and he will almost certainly wonder as to the reasons for his writing it. A brief explanation, then.

In 1842 Dumas wrote his second¹, and one of his best, historical romances, namely Le Chevalier d'Harmental (better known in England as The Conspirators) after which, surprisingly, between that year and 1844 (year of the ever-famous Les Trois Mousquetaires) he wrote no less than seven novels of which three are historical romances, and negligible,² and four novels of contemporary life which...