cover image Alexandre Dumas: Genius of Life

Alexandre Dumas: Genius of Life

Claude Schopp. Franklin Watts, $27.5 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-531-15093-1

The life of Alexandre Dumas ( pere ) was high melodrama, a whirl of grandiose schemes, mistresses, political adventurism, repeated flights from Paris. He set himself the goal of becoming famous by age 30, but after achieving fame as a playwright, celebrity suffocated him. Even love affairs became a dull repetition, though he repeated them far and wide, driving one mistress to attempt suicide. He consciously wrote in the romantic style because it made him millions, enabling him to support his various households. The spoiled son of a mulatto general under Napoleon, republican poet Dumas took to the streets in the anti-Bourbon revolution of 1830. He spent a week in jail in 1836 for refusing to serve in the National Guard; the 1848 revolution made him a born-again politician. Com bining elements of tragedy and farce, this captivating biography by a French scholar-diplomat brims with all the brio, gran deur and slapdash energy of The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers , serialized novels Dumas later took to the stage. (Nov.)