The Son of Clemenceau: A Novel of Modern Love and Life

Alexandre Dumas

Apr 2014 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

Alexandre Dumas "fils" was the illegitimate son of a Paris dressmaker and the renowned author of "The Three Musketeers." Dumas "pre" took him from his mother as a child (French law then allowed that), and gave the child a marvelous education at schools that included the Institution Goubaux and the Collge Bourbon -- but he could not take from the child the memory of his mother. Dumas "fils" spent much of his life writing of the loss of her -- in works like "Camille" and this novel, "The Son of Clemenceau." Alexandre Dumas "fils" died at Marly-le-Roi, Yvelines, on November 27, 1895; he is buried in the Cimetire de Montmartre in Paris.

About the author

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.