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East Lynne: French

DUMAS ALEXANDRE DUMAS was of mixed blood, the grandson of a French marquis and a native of the West Indies. His own father was a private in the French army when the Revolution broke out. He was swiftly promoted until he held the rank of general-in-chief in Spain, but he quarreled with Napoleon, and when he died he left but thirty acres of land to his widow and two children. Alexandre was born on July 24, 1802, in a town not far from Soissons. As a boy he had few advantages, for his mother was poor. He was, however, carefully instructed by a kindly priest. He then studied law, but his desire to write drove him to Paris, where he began his career by penning vaudeville sketches and melodramas.

He wrote plays for several years and his "Henri III" scored the first great success of the romantic drama. Short stories appeared at intervals, and then his novels. "The Three Musketeers" came out in 1844, and thereafter romance after romance came in such rapid succession that his collected works in French fill two hundred and twenty-seven volumes. He told Napoleon III that he had written twelve hundred books.

Prodigiously as he worked, he wasted just as prodigiously. He entertained a whole army of parasites, and in his last years was constantly harassed by creditors. He had married, in 1840, Ida Ferrier, an actress, but they did not long live together. His daughter came to his aid in 1868 when he was debt-ridden and ill, and two years later, on December 5, 1870, he died in the home of his son, the author of the popular "Camille."