Alexandre Dumas -- France
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was the son of a French nobleman, Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie and Louise-Céssette Dumas a slave, from the Caribbean island colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti). Years later when his son Thomas-Alexandre proposed to join the army, his father only agreed on condition that he did not use the de la Pailleterie name.
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas' courage and strength was a legend, and by 1793 he was a general at 31. Following a successful campaign with Napoleon in Egypt, Dumas seemed set for a brilliant future, but he refused to participate in the expedition to quash Toussaint-Louverture’s slave rebellion in Haiti. Bonaparte put an end to his career and he was despatched to France, captured during the journey, imprisoned interrogated and tortured for two years. When freed he was lame, deaf in one ear, partly paralysed and penniless. Aged 35 he retired to Villers-Cotterêts, where he died in 1806, at the age of 44, however, his son Alexandre Dumas would carry his name.
Alexandre Dumas, born Dumas Davy de la 
Pailleterie July 1802 in Villers-Cotterêts He was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world.
Many of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne were originally serialised. He also wrote plays and magazine articles and was a prolific correspondent.
Dumas was the Son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas' and although poor, the family had their father's distinguished reputation and aristocratic position. Dumas learnt fencing from the local fencing-master, and at only 10 would harangue adults with complete assurance. When he was about to leave school Madame Dumas gave her teenage son the choice of names.
As Davy de la Pailleterie he might be able to get a position with the royal family, as Dumas he had no prospects at all, but the young Dumas didn't hesitate in choosing his father's name. His real skill was his beautiful handwriting, which allowed him to enter the office of the local notary. In 1822, after the restoration of the monarchy, 20-year old Alexandre Dumas moved to Paris, where he worked at the Palais Royal in the office of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans. Dumas was now working harder than he had in Villers-Cotterêts, and he still had no entry to the world of fashion and the arts. He began reading widely and taking lessons in physics, chemistry and biology at a nearby hospital. Soon his first son, Alexandre was born but Dumas was determined to write a play and wrote a vaudeville sketch with two others, which was performed with mild success.
But it was his play, Christine, which he wrote in the evenings after work that won him a commission from the Théâtre Français, however it was abandoned during rehearsals. Fortunately Dumas had begun to write another, Henri III et sa coeur, which turned out to be a huge success, classical critics attacked the play, but its popularity was unassailable.
In 1830 he participated in the Revolution which ousted Charles X, and which replaced him on the throne with Dumas's former employer, the Duke of Orléans, who would rule 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 industrialise and with an improving economy the times were very rewarding for the skills of Alexandre Dumas. After writing more successful plays, he turned his efforts to novels, although attracted to an extravagant lifestyle, and always spending more than he earned, Dumas proved to be an astute marketer.
Since newspapers wanted many serial novels, in 1838 Dumas rewrote one of his plays to create his first serial novel, titled Le Capitaine Paul, which led to his forming a production studio that turned out hundreds of stories, all subject to his personal input and direction. 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, including Beatrice Cenci, Martin Guerre, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia as well as more recent incidents, including the cases of executed alleged murderers Karl Ludwig Sand and Antoine François Desrues.