Have you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelist to write their stories? What was happening in their lives to inspire their famous works? What was happening in the world at the time that they wrote those stories you love?

Join Host Bree Carlile while she helps to answer some of the questions you have always had about your favorite classic novelists.

For the next few weeks we will talk about the life of Alexandre Dumas. What inspired him to write The Three Musketeers? What else was happening in the world at the time?

Come with us as we release one episode each Tuesday detailing the life and history at the time of your favorite authors.

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Welcome to Bite At A Time Books Behind the Story, where we answer the questions you have about your favorite classic authors.

What inspired your favorite author to write their novels?

What was going on in the world at the time?

Follow along with us as we tell you what was happening in the world while your favorite authors wrote your favorite classics.

My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

If you enjoy our show, be sure to follow us so you get all the new episodes.

If you want to see exclusive behind the scenes of our show, join our Patreon.

We would also love for you to drop us a rating on your favorite podcast platform and share our show with your friends.

You can catch us on all the social medias at Bytebooks.

Our show is part of the Bite At the Time Books Productions Network.

If you would also like to hear a story by the author we are currently featuring, check out the Bite At A Time Books podcast.

Wherever you listen to podcasts right now, we are reading The Three Musketeers.

Today we will be talking about Alexandra Dumas and his life.

Alexandre Dumas July 2418 two to December 5187.

Also known as Alexandra Dumas Pierre, where Pierre is French for father to distinguish him from his son, Alexandre Dumas Phils was a French writer.

His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors.

Many of his historical novels of high adventure were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers 20 Years after, and the VI Comt of Brigalin ten years later.

His novels have been adapted since the early 20th century into nearly 200 films.

Prolific in several genres, Dumas began his career by writing plays, which were successfully produced from the first.

He also wrote numerous magazine articles and travel books.

His published works totaled 1000 pages in the eighteenforties Dumas founded the tiatra Historic in Paris.

His father, General Thomas Alexandra Dumas David de la Palatieri, was born in the French colony of Saint Dominique, presentday Haiti, to Alexandra Antone David de la Palateiri, a French nobleman, and Marie Sasset Dumas, an African slave.

At age 14, Thomas Alexandra was taken by his father to France, where he was educated in a military Academy, and entered the military for what became an illustrious career.

Dumas's father's aristocratic rank helped young Alexandra acquire work with Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, then as a writer, a career which led to early success decades later.

After the election of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in 1851, Dumas fell from favor and left France for Belgium, where he stayed for several years, then moved to Russia for a few years before going to Italy.

In 1861.

He founded and published the newspaper La Independent, which supported Italian unification before returning to Paris in 1864.

Though married in the tradition of Frenchmen of higher social class doubts, had numerous affairs, allegedly as many as 40.

He was known to have had at least four illegitimate children, although 20th century scholars believe it.

With seven, he acknowledged and assisted his son, Alexandra Dumas, to become a successful novelist and playwright.

They are known as Alexandra Dumas, Pierre father and Alexandra Dumas Phil's son.

Among his affairs.

In 1866, Dumas had one with Ada Isaacs Menken, an American actress who was less than half his age and at the height of her career.

The English playwright Watts Phillips, who knew Dumas in his later life, described him as the most generous, largehearted being in the world.

He also was the most delightfully, amusing and egotistical creature on the face of the Earth.

His tongue was like a Windmill once set in motion.

You never knew when he would stop, especially if the theme was himself.

Dumas Davy de la Palet, later known as Alexandra Dumas, was born in 18 two in Villars Kotara in the Department of ASNE in Picardy, France.

He had two older sisters, Marie Alexandrine, born 1794, and Louise Alexandrine.

Their parents were Marie Louise Elizabeth Laborette, the daughter of an innkeeper, and Thomas Alexandra Dumas.

Thomas Alexandra had been born in the French colony of Saint Dominique, now Haiti, the mixedrace natural son of the Marquis Alexandra Anton David de la Palatiri, a French nobleman and general Commenter in the artillery of the colony, and Marie Cicet Dumas, an enslaved woman of African Caribbean ancestry.

At the time of Thomas Alexandra's birth, his father was impoverished.

It is not known whether his mother was born in Saint Dominique or in Africa, nor is it known from which African people her ancestors came.

Brought as a boy to France by his father and legally freed there, Thomas Alexandra Dumas Davy was educated in a military school and joined the army as a young man.

As an adult, Thomas Alexandra used his mother's name, Dumas, as his surname.

After a break with his father, Dumas was promoted to general by the age of 31, the first soldier of Afro Antilles origin to reach that rank in the French Army.

While working for Louis Philippe, Dumas began writing articles for magazines and plays for the theater.

As an adult, he used his slave grandmother's surname of Dumas, as his father had done as an adult.

His first play, Henry III and His Courts, produced in 1829 when he was 27 years old, met with a claim the next year.

His second play, Christine, was equally popular.

These successes gave him sufficient income to write fulltime.

In 1830, Dumas participated in the revolution that ousted Charles Xi and replaced him with Dumas's former employer, the Duke of Orleans, who ruled as Louis Philippe, the citizen King.

Until the mid 1830s, life in France remained unsettled, with sporadic riots by disgruntled Republicans and impoverished urban workers.

Seeking Change as life slowly returned to normal, the nation began to industrialize.

An improving economy combined with the end of press censorship made the Times rewarding for Alexander Dumas's literary skills.

After writing additional successful plays, Doomas switched to writing novels.

Although attracted to an extravagant lifestyle and always spending more than he earned, Dumas proved to be an astute marketer as newspapers were publishing many serial novels.

His first serial novel was La Countess de Salisbury Edward, 3 July September 1836.

In 1838, Dumas rewrote one of his plays.

As a successful serial novel, Le Capitan Paul, he founded a production studio staffed with writers who turned out hundreds of stories, all subject to his personal direction.

Editing and Editions From 1839 to 1841, Dumas, with the assistance of several friends, compiled Celebrated Crimes, an eight volume collection of essays on famous criminals and crimes from European history.

He featured Beatrice Sensi, Martin Guerre Cesar and Lucrezia Borgia, as well as more recent events and criminals, including the cases of the alleged murderers Carl Ludwig Sand and Antoine Francois des Ru, who were executed.

Dumas collaborated with Augustine Grissier, his fencing master, in his 1840 novel The Fencing Master.

The story is written as Greier's account of how he came to witness the events of the Decemberist revolt in Russia.

The novel was eventually banned in Russia by SAR Nicholas I, and Dumas was prohibited from visiting the country until after the SARS death.

Dumas referred to Gracie with great respect in The Count of Monte Cristo, the Corsican brothers, and in his memoirs.

Dumas depended on numerous assistants and collaborators, of whom August Marquette was the best known.

It was not until the late 20th century that his role was fully understood.

Dumas wrote the short novel Georgia, which uses ideas and plots later repeated in The Count of Monte Cristo.

Maquette took Dumas to court to try to get authorial recognition and a higher rate of payment for his work.

He was successful in getting more money, but not a byline.

Dumas's novels were so popular that they were soon translated into English and other languages.

His writing earned him a great deal of money, but he was frequently insolvent as he spent lavishly on women and sumptuous living.

Scholars have found that he had a total of 40 mistresses.

In 1846 he had built a country home outside Paris at Laporte Marley, the large Chateau de Monte Cristo, with an additional building for his writing studio.

It was often filled with strangers and acquaintances who stayed for lengthy visits and took advantage of his generosity.

Two years later, faced with financial difficulties, he sold the entire property.

Dumas wrote in a wide variety of genres and published a total of 1000 pages in his lifetime.

He also made use of his experience writing travel books.

After taking journeys, including those motivated by reasons other than pleasure, Dumas traveled to Spain, Italy, Germany, England and French Algeria.

After King Louis Philippe was ousted in a revolt, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected President.

As Bonaparte disapproved of the author, Dumas fled in 1851 to Brussels, Belgium, which was also an effort to escape his creditors.

In about 1859 he moved to Russia, where French was the second language of the elite and his writings were enormously popular.

Dumas spent two years in Russia and visited St.

Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Astrakhan, Baku and Tublisi before leaving to seek different adventures.

He published travel books about Russia.

In March 1861, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, with Victor Emmanuel II as its King.

Dumas traveled there and for the next three years participated in the movement for Italian unification.

He founded and led a newspaper, Independent.

While there he befriended Giuseppe Geraldi, whom he had long admired and with whom he shared a commitment to Liberal Republican principles as well as membership within Freemasonry.

Returning to Paris in 1864, he published travel books about Italy.

Despite Dumas's aristocratic background and personal success, he had to deal with discrimination related to his mixed race ancestry.

In 1843 he wrote a short novel, George's, that addressed some of the issues of race and the effects of colonialism.

His response to a man who insulted him about his partial African ancestry has become famous, Dumas said.

My father was a Mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my greatgrandfather a monkey.

You see, sir, my family starts where yours ends.

On February 1, 1840, Dumas married actress IDA Ferrier, born Marguerite Josephine Ferrand, 1811 to 1859.

He had numerous liaisons with other women and was known to have fathered at least four children by them.

Alexandra Dumas Phils, 1825, son of Marie Lore Catherine Labay, 17, he became a successful novelist and playwright.

Marie Alexandria Dumas, the daughter of Bel Cres, Lemur Mikaela Klein, Joseph Elizabeth Cordier, born the daughter of Emily Courtier Henry Bauer, the son of a woman whose surname was Bauer.

About 1866 Dumas had an affair with Ada Isaacs Menken, a wellknown American actress, she had performed her sensational role in Mazeppa in London.

In Paris she had a sold out run of Le Piritz de la Savannah and was at the peak of her success.

These women were among Dumas'nearly 40 mistresses found by scholar Claude Shop and in addition to three natural children.

Along with Victor Hugo, Charles Butler, Gerard de Nirval, Eugene de la quois, and Honor de Bosak, Dumas was a member of the Club de Sachins, which met monthly to take Hashish at a hotel in Paris.

Dumas's, the Count of Monte Cristo, contained several references to Hashish.

On December 5187, Dumas died at the age of 68 of natural causes, possibly a heart attack.

After his death in December 1870, Dumas was buried at his birthplace of Villars Koteerets in the Department of ASNE.

His death was overshadowed by the Franco Prussian War, changing literary fashions decreased his popularity in the late 20th century.

Scholars such as Reginald Hamill and Claude Shop have caused a critical reappraisal and new appreciation of his art, as well as finding lost works in 19 seven.

Upon the centenary of his death, the Paris Metro named a station in his honor.

His country home outside Paris, the Chateau de Monte Cristo, has been restored and is open to the public as a Museum.

Researchers have continued to find Dumas works in archives, including the five act play The Gold Thieves, found in 2002 by the scholar Reginald Hamill in the Biblical National de France, who was published in France in 2004 by honor champion Frank Wild.

Reed, a New Zealand pharmacist who never visited France, amassed the greatest collection of books and manuscripts relating to Dumas outside France.

The collection contains about 3350 volumes, including some 2000 sheets in Doumas's handwriting and dozens of French, Belgian and English first editions.

The collection was donated to Auckland libraries after his death.

Reed wrote the most comprehensive bibliography of Dumas.

In 2002 for the bicentenary of Dumas's Earth, French President Jacques Chirack held a ceremony honoring the author by having his Ashes reinterred at the mausoleum of the Pantheon of Paris, where many French luminaries were buried.

When Cherokee ordered the transfer to the mausoleum, villagers in Dumas's hometown of Villars Cadorettes were initially opposed, arguing that Dumas laid out in his memoirs that he wanted to be buried there.

The village eventually bowed to the government's decision, and Dumas's body was exhumed from its Cemetery and put into a new coffin.

In preparation for the transfer, the proceedings were televised.

The new coffin was draped in a blue velvet cloth and carried on a Casin flanked by four mounted Republican Guards.

Costumed as the Four Musketeers, it was transported through Paris to the Pantheon.

In his speech, Shirk said, with you we were D'Artagnan Monte Cristo or Baltimore, riding along the roads of France, touring battlefields, visiting palaces and castles.

With you we dream.

Sherrock acknowledged the racism that had existed in France and said that the reinternment in the Pantheon had been a way of correcting that wrong.

As Alexandra Dumas was enshrined alongside fellow great authors Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, Sherrock noted that although France has produced many great writers, none has been so widely read as Dumas.

His novels have been translated into nearly 100 languages.

In addition, they have inspired more than 200 motion pictures.

In June 2005, Dumas's last novel, The Knight of St Hermion, was published in France, featuring the Battle of Trophy Glar.

Dumas described a fictional character killing Lord Nelson.

Nelson was shot and killed by an unknown sniper.

Writing and publishing the novel serially in 1869, Dumas had nearly finished it before his death.

It was the third part of the St Hermene trilogy.

Claude Shop Aduma scholar, noticed a letter in an archive in 1990 that led him to discover the unfinished work.

It took him years to research it, edit the completed portions, and decide how to treat the unfinished part.

Shop finally wrote the final two and a half chapters based on the author's notes to complete the story.

Published by Editions Fibis, it sold 600 copies, making it a bestseller.

Translated into English, it was released in 2006 as The Last Cavalier and has been translated into other languages.

Shop has since found additional material related to the St Hermene saga.

Shop combined them to publish the sequel La Salut de LEMPAR.

In 2008, French historian Alena Co founded the Society des Amis de Alexandra Dumas the Society of Friends of Alexandra Dumas in as of August 2017.

Its President is Claude Shop.

The purpose in creating this Society was to preserve the Chateau de Monte Cristo where the Society is currently located.

The other objectives of the Society are to bring together fans of Dumas to develop cultural activities of the Chateau de Monte Cristo and to collect books, manuscripts, autographs and other materials on Dumas.

Thank you for joining Bite At A Time Books Behind the Story Today while we answered some of the questions you have about one of your favorite classic authors.

If you enjoy our show, be sure to follow us so you get all the new episodes.

If you want to see exclusive behind the scenes of our show, join our Patreon.

We would also love for you to drop us a rating on your favorite podcast platform and share our show with your friends.

You can catch us on all the social medias at Byteimebooks.

Also be sure to check us on our Website.com.

Our show is part of the Bite At A Time Books Productions network.

If you would also like to hear a story by the author we are currently featuring, check out the Bite At A Time Books podcast.

Wherever you listen to podcasts right now we are reading the Three Musketeers again.