Alexandre Dumas
was born on July 24, 1802 in
Villers-Cotterêts 40 km NE of Paris. His birth certificate names
him Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie.
His grandfather was the Marquis
Antoine-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie
and his grandmother was
Marie-Céssette Dumas,
a black slave from Jérémie, Saint-Domingue (now part of Haiti).
She gave birth to
Thomas-Alexandre
and died when he was young. When they eventually returned to Paris,
his grandfather did not approve of his father enlisting the army
under the name of Davy de la Pailleterie, so he enlisted as
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. Thomas-Alexandre worked his way to the
title of General under Napoleon Bonaparte.
Alexandre grew up in Villers-Cotterêts, and traveled to Paris
when he was twenty. By twenty-five, he had his first success as a
playwright. Dumas has written many interesting anecdotes about
these years in Mes Mémoires. Many people do not realize
that Dumas became famous not for his novels, but for his plays.
Dumas wrote hundreds of plays, novels and travel diaries. He
wrote several children's stories, and a culinary dictionary. He
started several magazines and wrote in them weekly. He was one of
the most prolific writers ever, and did not shy away from
collaborating with others or rewriting older stories.
His most successful novels are not deep, but contain marvelous
adventures and actions, and bigger-than-life characters. He wrote
many historical novels where he took great liberty with the truth
in order to achieve a good story, but never claimed that they
were historically accurate.
His son,
Alexandre Dumas fils,
wrote several important novels
including La Dame aux Camélias, the basis of Verdi's
opera
La Traviata.
After many years of writing, traveling, and carousing, after
he had made and lost several fortunes, Dumas died in Puys, near Dieppe, on
December 5, 1870.
If you would be willing to contribute your talents to
rewriting a short public-domain biography of Alexandre Dumas
(French or English), I will gladly showcase it here.
