Dumas

Born on July 24, 1802 in Villers-Cotterets, Aisne, France, Alexandre Dumas grew to become one of France’s most notable authors. His father, born in the French colony of Saint Domingue, located in the Caribbean, was a Creole general for the French Revolutionary armies, and his mother was the daughter of an inn-keeper. Given Thomas-Alexandre Dumas’s lineage of a mother who was of Afro-Caribbean ancestry, Alexandra Dumas himself was also a man of Afro-Caribbean descent through blood. At the tender age of four, Dumas lost his father to cancer, leaving his mother struggling to provide for Dumas and his two siblings. Though financially troubled, Marie-Louise Labouret-Dumas tried to give her son an education; much to her avail, young Alexandre had little enthusiasm toward it. As he grew older, Dumas began working with a local notary to aid in his family’s economic situation.
In 1822, Dumas left his home for Paris, where he worked as a secretary under the Duke of Orleans, who would soon become King Louis Philippe later on. It was during this period that Dumas became captivated by the literary world. He read often and attended the theatre during his free time, and quickly developed a fondness for the works of William Shakespeare. It was inevitable for Dumas to begin dabbling in the realm of literature, and in 1825, he began to write his first plays. Henri III et sa cour, published in 1829, became the play that propelled him toward popularity and success. All the meanwhile, Dumas, involved in a relationship with fellow author and playwright Marie Laure Catherine Labay, had a son, also named Alexandre Dumas. To distinguish between the two, Dumas was to be known as Dumas pere while his son was Dumas fils.
When the revolution of 1830 took place, Dumas’s writings decreased temporarily as he became involved in the ideologies of the Marquis de Lafayette. Discontent by his political activities, Louis Philippe, now king, forced Dumas into exile. During his time out of France,