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The Count of Monte Cristo

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Overview

ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATEDBY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIPAlexandre Dumas's thrilling adventure of one man's quest for freedom and vengeance on those who betrayed him. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:.

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Author Information

Bio of Alexandre Dumas

After an idle youth, Alexandre Dumas went to Paris and spent some years writing. A volume of short stories and some farces were his only productions until 1927, when his play Henri III (1829) became a success and made him famous. It was as a storyteller rather than a playwright, however, that Dumas gained enduring success. Perhaps the most broadly popular of French romantic novelists, Dumas published some 1,200 volumes during his lifetime. These were not all written by him, however, but were the works of a body of collaborators known as "Dumas & Co." Some of his best works were plagiarized. For example, The Three Musketeers (1844) was taken from the Memoirs of Artagnan by an eighteenth-century writer, and The Count of Monte Cristo (1845) from Penchet's A Diamond and a Vengeance. At the end of his life, drained of money and sapped by his work, Dumas left Paris and went to live at his son's villa, where he remained until his death.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Pocket

Filesize

1.21 MB

Number of Pages

688

eBook ISBN

9780743487559

Excerpt from: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Introduction

The Count of Monte Cristo:
The Nineteenth Century's Pop Culture Superhero

Alexandre Dumas's rise to fame was boosted by changes in France's social fabric. Literacy was surging, newspapers were booming, and the general population was clamoring for something to read. Dumas gave them what they wanted: page-turning thrills and romance. Elitist critics accused him of pandering to the coarse tastes of the common people, but such criticisms went virtually unnoticed. When The Count of Monte Cristo appeared in serial form in 1844, it became a sensation. Within months, it had been translated into ten languages and could count the highest intellects of the era among its fans. William Makepeace Thackeray and Robert Louis Stevenson sang its praises unabashedly. Its popularity has hardly dimmed in more than 150 years. Since the dawn of motion pictures and television, it has been adapted no fewer than fifty times.

In eulogies that appeared in the years after his death, critics grudgingly began to give Dumas his due, and the place of The Count of Monte Cristo in literary history came into focus. These critics now acknowledged what readers had long known: that the adventure, thrills, and sheer pleasure of reading the book could overcome its historical inaccuracies, plot contrivances, and one-dimensional characters. Dumas's masterful pacing and dialogue hold readers' rapt attention as the Count's mission ignites their imaginations. Finer novels have been written, to be sure, but The Count of Monte Cristo remains relevant, beloved, and admired to this day, despite its imperfections.

The Count is Dumas's greatest contribution to literature. He is seemingly superhuman, and his story lunges forward on the steam of injustice, vengefulness, and righteousness. The patron saint of the wronged, he inspires our fantasies like the shadowy heroes of comic books to come -- figures like Batman, the Daredevil, and the Crow -- who draw strength and stamina from their thirst for justice and desire for revenge.