The year was 1807. Five-year-old Alexandre Dumas knew that he was different from the other boys in the sall town of Villers-Cotterets. For Alexandre was half black and half white. And nobody ever let him forget that.
Education bored young Alexandre and as he grew, he preferred spending his time hunting and leading an outdoor life. But when Alexandre turned sixteen, his whole life changed. He saw his first play-a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and from that moment on, his dream was to go to Paris and become a playwright.
Dumas worked for years as a clerk and wrote in his spare time. He had success writing plays and travel books. But, it wasn’t until 1844 that Alexandre Dumas hit upon the one kind of story that was to make him rich and famous. That was the historical novel.
In his many historical novels, Dumas took people who really existed in French history and events that actually happened. He added main characters from his own imagination and created entertaining and amusing adventure stories around them.
The most famous of all Dumas’ historical novels are The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Man in the Iron Mask.
Alexandre Dumas wrote more than six hundred books in his lifetime, more than any other man, living or dead. And he made money from them. But he spent everything he earned building elegant mansions, entertaining great artists and writers of Paris buying theaters and newspaper, and romancing many women.
The man who made the world rich with all his books died in 1870-penniless!
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