Alexandre Dumas -- France
Dumas also collaborated with his fencing master Augustin Grisier in his 1840 novel, The Fencing Master. The story is written to be Grisier's narrated account of how he came to witness the events of the Decembrist revolt in Russia. This novel was eventually banned in Russia by Czar Nicholas I, causing Dumas to be banned from visiting Russia until after the Czar's death. Grisier is also mentioned with great respect in The Count of Monte Cristo, The Corsican Brothers and in Dumas's memoirs.
Dumas made extensive use of the aid of numerous assistants and collaborators, of whom Auguste Maquet was the best known. It was Maquet who helped outline the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo, and made contributions to The Three Musketeers and its sequels, as well as to several of Dumas' other novels. A journalist named Jacquot had written many scathing, racist and untrue articles about Dumas, his work and his family. Dumas sued for libel and Jacqout was sentenced to six months in prison.
Despite Alexandre Dumas's success and aristocratic background, his being of mixed race affected him all his life. In 1843 he wrote a short novel, Georges that addressed some of the issues of race and the effects of colonialism, Dumas made new deals and remained as flamboyant as ever, he travelled to North Africa as a representative of the French government. Dumas's writing earned him a great deal of money, and to support his new eminence he built an extravagant château near Saint-Germain, which the locals immediately dubbed Monte Cristo.
When King Louis-Philippe was ousted in a revolt, the newly elected President, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, did not look upon Dumas favorably. In 1851 Dumas fled to Brussels, Belgium, and from there he travelled to Russia, where French was the second language, and where his writings were enormously popular. Dumas spent two years in Russia, before moving on to seek adventure and fodder for more stories. In March 1861 the kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, with Victor Emmanuel II as its king. For the next three years Alexandre Dumas would be involved in the fight for a united Italy, founding and leading a newspaper, named Indipendente. The Neapolitans were resentful of the foreigner in their midst and he was soon on his way back to France, returning to Paris in 1864.
His bohemian life began again on a smaller scale, but he was surrounded by sycophants who fleeced him for all they could get. They alienated his son Alexandre, whose glittering career as a playwright and novelist was just beginning, in comparison Dumas was now a forgotten man. By 1869 Dumas was exhausted, chronically confused and in July 1870 his son decided to take him to his villa at Puys, near Dieppe. One day he asked his son Alexandre whether he thought his work would live on. The younger Dumas explained his conviction that the work would last forever, by the next day Dumas had died.
In June 2005 Dumas's recently discovered last novel, The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, went on sale in France. Within the story Dumas describes the Battle of Trafalgar, in which the death of Lord Nelson is explained. The novel was being published serially, and was nearly complete at the time of his death. A final two-and-a-half chapters were written by modern-day Dumas scholar Claude Schopp, who based his efforts on Dumas' pre-writing notes. Although he was originally buried where he had been born, in 2002 French President, Jacques Chirac, had his body exhumed. During a televised ceremony his new coffin, draped in a blue velvet cloth and flanked by four Republican Guards (costumed as the Musketeers, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan), was transported in a solemn procession to the Panthéon of Paris, the great mausoleum where French luminaries are interred. In his speech President Chirac said:
"With you, we were D'Artagnan, Monte Cristo, or Balsamo, riding along the roads of France, touring battlefields, visiting palaces and castles, with you we dream."
Also during that speech, Chirac acknowledged the racism that had existed, saying that a wrong had now been righted, with Alexandre Dumas enshrined alongside fellow authors Victor Hugo and Emile Zola. The honour recognised that although France has produced many great writers, none has been so widely read as Alexandre Dumas. His stories have been translated into almost a hundred languages, and have inspired more than 200 motion pictures. Alexandre Dumas' home outside of Paris, the Château de Monte-Cristo, has been restored and is open to the public.
The Alexandre Dumas Paris Métro station was named in his honour in 1970. Dumas appears as a character in the Kevin J. Anderson novel Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius. He encourages Jules Verne to find his own voice and write about his friend Captain Nemo's exploits rather than emulate Dumas' historical fiction. Alexandre Dumas wrote numerous stories and historical chronicles of high adventure that captured the imagination of the French public, who eagerly waited to purchase the continuing sagas.