Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas (1802-70), French novelist and dramatist, known as Dumas pere. He frequently worked with such collaborators as August Maquet, who re-searched the background for his famous historical novels The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo (both 1844). Between 1844 and 1854 he produced more than 24 novels and stories. His illegitimate son Alexandre (1824-95), known as Dumas fils, was also a novelist and dramatist. His best-known work was the play The Lady of the Camelias (1848), the tragic story of a famous French courtesan, which Verdi adapted as the opera La Traviata in 1853.