Macmillan Collector’s Library: The Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas was born in France in 1802, the son of the half-Creole aristocrat General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. In early adulthood, he took work as a clerk, met the renowned actor Talma, and began to write short pieces for the theatre. Dumas later turned his hand to novel-writing, and penned such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

After enduring a short period of bankruptcy, Dumas began to travel extensively, still keeping up a prodigious output of journalism, short fiction and novels. He had around forty mistresses in his lifetime and fathered at least four illegitimate children, including Alexandre Dumas, fils, who later wrote La Dame aux Camelias. He died in Dieppe in 1870.