Floyd: That's "Cristo", you dumb shit.
[Red grins with laughter.]
Heywood: By Alexandree... Dumbass. Dumbass.
[Red finally bursts out laughing.]
Andy: ...dumbass?
[Heywood, amused, shows the title page as "proof".]
Andy: "Du-mah". You know what it's about?
Heywood: Uh-uh.
Andy: You'll like it. It's about a prison break.
Alexandre Dumas (born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870) was a famous French novelist and playwright of the 19th century. His father was a French general who rose to prominence during the Revolution, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas
, who was nicknamed "The Black Devil" for his courage and African (by way of Haiti) ancestry. "Dumas" was the surname of his slave grandmother while "Davy de la Pailleterie" was his grandfather's, part of minor aristocracy, but Dumas like his father before him chose to go Nom de Mom.
He is best remembered for his historical adventure novels, which include The Count of Monte Cristo and the series that begins with The Three Musketeers. He is very much the Trope Codifier for the Swashbuckler genre. He was also, quite fittingly, the first French translator of his British equivalent in historical fiction, Walter Scott.
Dumas' body of work totalizes 98 entries. He is one of the most-read French authors in history along with his contemporaries Victor Hugo and Jules Verne, and the second-most translated after the latter according to the UNESCO Index Translationum.
His son, also named Alexandre Dumas, was also a novelist and playwright; they are commonly distinguished by referring to the elder as Alexandre Dumas, père ("father"; or Alexandre Dumas Sr.), and the younger as Alexandre Dumas, fils ("son"; Alexandre Dumas Jr.).
Selected works by Alexandre Dumas, père:
- D'Artagnan Romances
- The Three Musketeers
- Twenty Years After
- The Vicomte of Bragelonne
- The Black Tulip
- The Corsican Brothers
- The Count of Monte Cristo
- Joseph Balsamo
- Kean
- The Last Valois series
- La Reine Margot
- La Dame de Monsoreau
- Les Quarante-Cinq
- The Red Sphinx
- The Tower of Nesle
- The Woman with the Velvet Necklace
Dumas adaptations on this wiki include:
Lists:Others:
Works by Dumas, père, include examples of:
- Ancient Conspiracy: In Joseph Balsamo, a secret society led by a Great Copt seeks to radically usher in the French Revolution by behind-the-scenes shenanigans.
- Historical Domain Character:
- He used a ton of them in his novels, of course.
- Dumas appears occasionally as a character in movies. One notable instance is Roberto Rossellini's Viva L'Italia where he appears, dressed in a dapper white suit, to meet Giuseppe Garibaldi after he takes Palermo. True enough, the real Dumas did indeed write a report on Garibaldi's expedition.
- In Fate/strange Fake, he is summoned as the Servant False Caster. He is portrayed as an obnoxious hedonist who only cares about women and food (he often brags that he slept with both Cleopatra VII and Yang Guifei, which no one believes), but he is a lot smarter than he looks and quickly masters using the Internet to gather information. In life, he helped smuggle weapons to Giuseppe Garibaldi and had a museum of ancient artifacts, which translates to an ability to create Noble Phantasms that are just as strong or stronger than the originals. Also, in this universe, Edmond Dantes was a real person (and eventually became an Avenger in Fate/Grand Order) whose experiences Dumas recorded in interviews to create The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas did not give Dantes any royalties for the book, causing Dumas to comment that Dantes would probably try to kill him if he were around.
- In The BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Georges, which is actually about trying to adapt Georges, he appears as a voice in the unnamed writer's head, one of the influences pushing him in different directions as he tries to figure out what the book was saying at the time, and what it says in the 21st century. He's very much approving of the Off the Rails ending in which the writer enters the story himself and gives Georges and the rebellion laser guns.
- Impossibly Tacky Clothes: In Les Quarante-Cinq / The Forty-Five Guardsmen, we are informed that they have no uniform and, since they are just arrived in Paris, they are provided with money to buy new clothes; the results were a motley assortment of styles and decorations, "generally in bad taste".
- Misplaced Wildlife: Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine features alligators, vampire bats (only mentioned by the main character) and the Kraken (mentioned by the narrator) as creatures that can be encountered in the jungles and lakes of, wait for it... India.
- Money, Dear Boy: The reason his novels are so long? They were serialized in newspapers at first. The longer they lasted, the more he was paid.
