The Count of Monte Cristo

Set against the turbulent years of the Napoleonic era, Alexandre Dumas’s thrilling adventure story is one of the most widely read romantic novels of all time. In it the dashing young hero, Edmond Dante s, is betrayed by his enemies and thrown into a secret dungeon in the Chateau d’If — doomed to spend his life in a dank prison cell. The story of his long, intolerable years in captivity, his miraculous escape, and his carefully wrought revenge creates a dramatic tale of mystery and intrigue and paints a vision of France — a dazzling, dueling, exuberant France — that has become immortal.

Author Biography

Alexandre Dumas(1802-1870) lived a life as romantic as that depicted in his famous novels. He was born in Villers-Cotterats, France. His early education was scanty, but his beautiful handwriting secured him a position in Paris in 1822 with the du’Orleans, where he read voraciously and began to write. His first play,Henri III et sa cour(1829), scored a resounding success for its author and the romantic movement. His lavish spending and flamboyant habits led to the construction of his fabulous Ch teau de Monte-Cristo, and in 1851 he fled to Belgium to escape creditors. Dumas’s overall literary output reached more than 277 volumes, but his brilliant historical novels made him the most universally read of all French novelists. With collaborators, mainly Auguste Maquet, Dumas wrote such works asThe Three Musketeers(1843-1844); its sequels,Twenty Years After(1845) and the great mysteryThe Man in the Iron Mask(1845-1850); andThe Count of Monte Cristo(1844). His work ignored historical accuracy, psychology, and analysis, but its thrilling adventure and exuberant inventiveness continued to delight readers, and Dumas remains one of the prodigies of nineteenth-century French literature.