Alexandre Dumas

This powerful, eloquent play moves like a Greek tragedy to its inevitable conclusion. Dumas's drama is based on an actual event-the assassination of Duke Alexander of Medici in 1537 by his cousin, Lorenzo. Lorenzino lures his relative to a trap under the pretext of providing him with a woman. He gets close to the Duke by pandering to his lusts, just so that he'll have the opportunity to kill him. His plan ultimately works, but results in the suicide...

If our readers, tempted by the Italian proverb about seeing Naples and then dying, were to ask us what is the most favourable moment for visiting the enchanted city, we should advise them to land at the mole, or at Mergellina, on a fine summer day and at the hour when some solemn procession is moving out of the cathedral. Nothing can give an idea of the profound and simple-hearted emotion of this populace, which has enough poetry in its soul to believe...

Excerpt: "It is with cities as with men-chance presides over their foundation; and the topographical situation of the first, and the social position of the latter, exercise a beneficial or an evil influence over their entire existence. There are noble cities which, in their selfish pride of place, have refused to permit the erection even of a few humble cottages on the mountain on which their foundations rested: their domination must be exclusive...

Joseph Balsamo is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, inspired by the life and personality of Giuseppe Balsamo, commonly referred to as Count Alessandro di Cagliostro.

"Twenty Years After" is the sequel to Alexandre Dumas' epic tale of love, loyalty and revenge, "The Three Musketeers," and features all of the surviving characters from the first book, now two decades older but no less willing to fight for their honor: d'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis - the famous Musketeers - along with the evil Count Rochefort, the servant Planchet and the benevolent Queen Anne. D'Artagnan, once a promising cadet, has...

Features one of the strangest characters in literature, Joseph Balsamo, also known as Cagliostro (later a key figure in the Affair of the Necklace). An alchemist, conspirator, and Freemason, Balsamo figures prominently in the eventual downfall of the French monarchy.

Excerpt: "It was a winter night, and the ground around Paris was covered with snow, although the flakes had ceased to fall since some hours. Spite of the cold and the darkness, a young man, wrapped in a mantle so voluminous as to hide a babe in his arms, strode over the white fields out of the town of Villers Cotterets, in the woods, eighteen leagues from the capital, which he had reached by the stagecoach, towards a hamlet called Haramont. His assured...

Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and so many sequels, all but invented the action adventure novel, and certainly he has few peers in all the years since. His stories are thrilling works of derring-do, foul deeds, close escapes, and glorious victories.

Excerpt: "If you ever chanced, dear reader, to go from Nantes to Bourgneuf you must, before reaching Saint-Philbert, have skirted the southern corner of the lake of Grand-Lieu, and then, continuing your way, you arrived, at the end of one hour or two hours, according to whether you were on foot or in a carriage, at the first trees of the forest of Machecoul."

Inhalt: Die drei Musketiere Zwanzig Jahre nachher Der Graf von Monte Christo Das Halsband der Königin Ange Pitou oder Die Erstürmung der Bastille Der Frauenkrieg Die Fünfundvierzig Die Gräfin Charny Napoleon Bonaparte Lady Hamilton (Memoiren einer Favoritin) Zehn Jahre später (oder der Graf von Bragelonne) Bernhard Blanca von Beaulieu Cherubino und Celestini Das Brautkleid Ein Liebesabenteuer Ein Maskenball Gabriel Lambert-Der...