The Three Musketeers

Front Cover
AD Classic, 2011 - Fiction - 600 pages
When young d'Artagnan travels to Paris to join the ranks of the Musketeers, he soon finds himself challenged to three duals with Athos, Porthos and Aramis. However, the foursome is abruptly attacked by the evil Cardinal Richelieu's guards, and d'Artagnan fights alongside them, proving his skills with a sword and his honour. The three Musketeers enfold d'Artagnan into their ranks, and what follows is a swashbuckling tale full of intrigue, friendship and revenge. Alexandre Dumas got the idea for The Three Musketeers from Courtilz de Sandras' 1700 novel Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan, which was based on real events surrounding the lives of d'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Dumas made them human, gave them colour, and made them more real than even the truth itself. Since then the term 'Three Musketeers' has been used to describe a trio of individuals who support each other including Supreme Court Justices, engineers and Japanese wrestlers.

About the author (2011)

After an idle youth, Alexandre Dumas went to Paris and spent some years writing. A volume of short stories and some farces were his only productions until 1927, when his play Henri III (1829) became a success and made him famous. It was as a storyteller rather than a playwright, however, that Dumas gained enduring success. Perhaps the most broadly popular of French romantic novelists, Dumas published some 1,200 volumes during his lifetime. These were not all written by him, however, but were the works of a body of collaborators known as "Dumas & Co." Some of his best works were plagiarized. For example, The Three Musketeers (1844) was taken from the Memoirs of Artagnan by an eighteenth-century writer, and The Count of Monte Cristo (1845) from Penchet's A Diamond and a Vengeance. At the end of his life, drained of money and sapped by his work, Dumas left Paris and went to live at his son's villa, where he remained until his death.

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