Alexandre Dumas, born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie on 24 July 1802 in Villers-Cotterêts, France, and died 5 December 1870, remains one of the most widely read French authors, best known for his historical adventure serials. His father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was born in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) to a French nobleman and an enslaved African woman, a heritage that shaped Dumas's life. Dumas began his career writing successful plays, then moved into novels, producing over 100,000 pages of published work, including *The Count of Monte Cristo*, *The Three Musketeers*, *Twenty Years After*, and *The Vicomte of Bragelonne*. His novels have been adapted into nearly 200 films since the early 20th century. In the 1840s, he founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris. After the 1851 election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Dumas fell from favor, living in Belgium, Russia, and Italy, where he founded the newspaper *L'Indépendant* in 1861 to support Italian unification. He returned to Paris in 1864. His legacy endures through countless adaptations, including the Classics Illustrated comic series that adapted his works for generations of readers.
