The Count of Monte Cristo: One love, a betrayal, one revenge

Alexandre Dumas, one of the most widely read French authors in the world, wrote during the late 19th century a prominent romantic historical novel; love, betrayal, revenge, and redemption convert the story of The Count Of Monte- Cristo in one of the most renowned classics of all time. It is considered an extraordinary novel because of its shocking characters, theme, and drive to vengeance. Alexandre Dumas was born on July 1802 in Villers Cotterets in Picardy, France. He was the only true quadroon, the only grandchild of a Negro (Lazen 1506). He was born as the illegitimate son of the famous novelist Thomas Dumas. Dumas was raised by his seamstress mother, Catherine Labay, until the elder Dumas legally recognized his paternity and assumed responsibility for his son’s care in 1831. He was the only man with wooly hair, and deficient calves, and black pigment in the creases of the joints of his fingers, whoever gained a considerable place in the literature of the world (Parini 1506). He secured his own fame in 1852 with the production of La dame aux camellias, a drama based on his novel by the same name. This work, which faithfully portrayed the life of a Parisian, introduced realism to the modern French stage. Dumas subsequently made important contributions to the theater in his self-proclaimed role as a social reformer: using the stage as a tribunal for such contemporary social problems as adultery and divorce, he pioneered the development of the model social drama (Lancaster 345). Dumas is praised by almost all the novels he wrote, but there are three in special by which he pass into history as the French writer most admired of all time: * The Three Musketeers (France, July 1844) * The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later, “The Man in Iron Mask” (France, 1847). * The Count of Monte Cristo