Dumas, Alexandre

du-ma', Alexandre (1803-1870), a French dramatist and novelist. His grandmother on his father's side was a negress. Dumas was very dark and curly haired. His life was spent largely in Paris. As a young man he was employed by the Duke of Orleans in the capacity of secretary. This position afforded an opportunity for reading, study, and writing. He tried a number of farces. In 1829 he was lucky enough to hit on the plot of a play called Henri III, which brought him fame and several thousand dollars. From this time on he devoted himself to literature, producing plays and novels without end. The Recollections of a Physician, the Count of Monte-Cristo, and the Three Musketeers--the latter spun out by sequels into eight volumes--are perhaps his most noted works. He was an unprincipled, unchaste, depraved man, with dissipated habits, but a man of genius and ambition. After he had achieved fame and his writings commanded a high price he employed a bureau of hack writers and guided their efforts, turning off the product of his factory as his own. When this fact was discovered he fell into disrepute, but he had amassed a fortune. This he spent, in part, in the erection of a theater in which his plays should be acted, and in the building of a chateau or country seat which he named Monte-Cristo.

A natural son of the same name, called by way of distinction, Dumas the Younger, followed in his father's footsteps, and wrote a large number of dashing novels and dramas. The term demi-monde was coined by him as a title for one of his dramas. He was made a member of the French Academy. He died in 1895. The relation of the father to the son may be inferred from the following words of the younger Dumas, "My father is so vain that he is capable of standing in livery behind his own carriage to make people think he sports a negro footman."