Rue Alexandre Dumas

Sacred monster of literature, Alexandre Dumas is probably, with Victor Hugo, the most popular writer of the nineteenth century. Born in Villers-Cotter in 1802, of a republican general, himself the son of a black slave, he saw his father disappear in 1806. The lack of resources forced him to earn his living first as a notary's clerk, then in Paris, where his ambition to conquer literary glory attracted him as an employee in the offices of Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orlacute. From his second play, the first, Henri III et sa cour (1829), the first romantic drama to be performed at the Thétre-Français, he was the leader of the 1830s generation. After the invention of the novel and the romantic drama, he chooses the novel, in particular the historical novel, with the project of writing the Drama of France, a series of novels that, while entertaining, would teach the people their own history. His cycles, painting the end of the Valois (La Reine Margot, La Dame de Monsoreau, Les Quarante-Cinq), the advent of absolute monarchy (Les Trois Mousquetaires, Vingt ans après, The Vicomte de Bragelonne), the fall of the monarchy and the R&e;volution (Joseph Balsamo, The Queen's Necklace, Ange Pitou, The Countess of Charny), ensure his glory and make him one of the pères of our collective mémoire.