From Our Editors
A young adventurer joins three musketeers, in the service of Louis XIII, and becomes involved in Cardinal Richelieu's plots to embarrass the royal family.
From the Publisher
Perhaps the greatest "cloak and sword" story ever written, The
Three Musketeers, first published ion 1844, is a tale for all
time. Pitting the heroic young d'Artagnan and his noble
compatriots, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis against the master of
intrigue, Cardinal Richelieu, and the quintessential wicked woman,
Lady de Winter, Alexandre Dumas has created an enchanted France of
swordplay, schemes and assignations. The era and the characters are
based on historical fact, but the glittering romance and fast-paced
action spring from a great writer's incomparable imagination. From
the perilous retrieval of the queens gift to her lover in time to
foil Rechelieu's plot to the melodramatic revelation of Lady de
Winter's true identity, The Three Musketeers is the
unchallenged archetype for literary romance and a perennial delight
for generations of readers.
About the Author
Alexandre Dumas (père) lived a life as romantic as that depicted in
his famous novels. He was born on July 24,1802, at
Villers-Cotterêts, France, the son of Napoleon's famous mulatto
general, Dumas, His early education was scanty, but his beautiful
handwriting secured him a position in Paris in 1822 with the
du'Orléans, 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 for the romantic movement. Numerous
dramatic successes followed (including the melodrama Kean
, later adapted by Jean-Paul Satre), and so did numerous mistresses
and adventures. He took part in the revolution of 1830 and caught
cholera during the epidemic of 1832, fathered two illegitimate
children by two different mistresses, and then married still
another mistress. (The first of these two children, Alexandre
Dumas, [fils], became a famous author also,) His lavish spending
and flamboyant habits led to the construction of his fabulous
Château de Monte-Christo, and in 1851 he fled to Belgium to escape
creditors. He died on December 5, 1870, bankrupt but still
cheerful, saying of death, "I shall tell her a story, and she will
be kind to me."
Dumas's overall literary output reached over 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 as The Three Musketeer (1843-44);
its sequels, Twenty Years After (1845) and the great
mystery The Man in the Iron Mask (1845-50); and The
Count of Monte Cristo (1844). L'action and
l'amour were the two essential things in life and his
fiction. He declared he "elevated history to the dignity of the
novel" by means of love affairs, intrigues, imprisonments,
hairbreadth escapes, and duels. His work ignored historical
accuracy, Psychology, and analysis, but its thrilling adventure and
exuberant inventiveness continue to delight readers, and Dumas
remains one of the prodigies of nineteenth-century French
literature.
Mass Market Paperbound
656 Pages, 4.15 x 6.9 x 1.1 IN
June 1, 1984
Random House Publishing Group
0553213377
9780553213379