The incredible marquis, Alexandre Dumas
"In approaching Alexandre Dumas père one approaches a mountain. It rises from the fair plains of French letters, shaggy, undisciplined, less imposing for its height than for its wide base, and curiously difficult to explore. Indeed, it would take the better part of a lifetime to follow all its trails, ferret out all its secret caverns, and elucidate all its incomprehensible excrescences. Yet some idea of its general shape and orientation is possible if the major paths be traced. The following chapters do not pretend to be exhaustive; for to present an exhaustive portrait of Dumas would mean a work that ran to several fat volumes. If all his devious days were traced, if all his books were analyzed, if all his love affairs were considered, if all his lawsuits were set forth in detail, if all his peregrinations through France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Africa were meticulously followed, if all his quarrels were described, if all the stories and slanders and gossip that sprang up in illimitable mushroom growths wherever he went were detailed, the resultant work would resemble Behemoth among biographies. Since that is impossible I have selected, expanding those portions of his career that seemed most revelatory to me and telescoping those portions that were repetitions. First of all, I have striven for readableness. It was the man's life that I was writing and not a critical study of his work; therefore his plays and novels are considered only in relation to his career, such critical attention as has been included being there only to realize and clarify the mind of Dumas and its divagations." -- Preface
Print Book, English, 1929
Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., New York, 1929