Dumas's famous novel The Three Musketeers (1844) is an adventure and a romance set in seventeenth century France and features the four heroes, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan.

Although it is on a much smaller scale than The Count of Monte Cristo, Edgar Allan Poe's chilling short story "The Cask of Amontillado," first published in 1846, also features a protagonist whose sole focus is revenge on the man who has wronged him.

Lord Byron's poem "The Prisoner of Chillon," first published in 1816, was inspired by the story of a sixteenth century priest who spent six years in solitary confinement in the Castle of Chillon in Switzerland. Byron's prisoner goes through despair and near delirium but eventually finds a kind of peace.

Culture and Society in France 1789—1848 (1987), by F. W. J. Hemmings, is a much-cited study that traces the continuities and discontinuities...