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ALEXANDRE DUMAS, aka Dumas pere (Dumas the father)
(1802-1870)
Source editor

The son of one of Napoleon's Generals, Dumas' fame rests primarily on his excellent novels, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo and the sequels these works generated. Dumas also wrote for the stage, and enjoyed popular success there. His works were not so much concerned with the accuracy of their historical information as they were for the development of their characters, and the creation of a satisfying story.

Dumas' success allowed him to live in a lavish manner, but his spending soon outdistanced his income, and he was forced to write voluminously in order to pay the bills. His later output was mostly in feature articles for newspapers and magazines, travel books, and "translations" (really, rewrites) of the stories of non-French authors. It is through his retelling of Hoffman's "The Nutcracker and the Mouse-King" that we get the libretto for The Nutcracker.

His illegitimate son, also named Alexandre Dumas, aka Dumas fils (Dumas the son), was the author of La Dame aux Camellias, the source of the opera La
Traviata and Sir Frederick Ashton's ballet Marguerite and Armand.

It may be of interest to point out that the elder Dumas' grandmother was a Haitienne Noire, and thus the two authors may be considered to have had
African ancestry.