Camille

Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–95) was the illegitimate son of a Belgian seamstress and the famed novelist Alexandre Dumas. He was educated in several Parisian private schools and the Collège Bourbon. The elder Dumas acknowledged him as his natural son and for some time made him his constant companion. In 1847, the younger Dumas published his first novel, Adventures of Four Women and a Parrot, followed a year later by Camille (The Lady of the Camellias), and ten other novels over the next decade. Following the great success of the dramatic version of Camille, Dumas was gradually drawn away from the novel to the stage. He was elected to the French Academy in 1874 and continued to produce a long line of successful plays until his death. Toril Moi is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University. Widely known for her work on feminist theory, she is the author of Sexual/Textual Politics; What Is a Woman?; and Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman. The editor of The Kristeva Reader and French Feminist Thought, she recently published a book on Henrik Ibsen.