Continuing our look at classic authors you can discover on river cruises, this week we’re looking at the life and work of Alexandre Dumas. Dumas is one of France’s best-loved literary figures, responsible for countless pieces of travel writing as well as novels that endure to the modern day. Take a river cruise through Paris, and you may even get the chance to find Dumas’ legacy hidden away all over the city.

Paris – Alexandre Dumas

“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”

Alexandre Dumas was a man concerned with action and adventure. His novels are among the best-loved of any French author, and have since been translated into almost a hundred different languages. The author is most famous for The Count of Monté Cristo and The Three Musketeers, and he wasn’t afraid to talk at length about his passion for the written word, and his regard for himself, to anyone who would listen. He even enjoys renewed success long after his death, beyond the perennial Three Musketeers –his unfinished novel, The Last Cavalier, being faithfully completed and published in English in 2008 by a scholar of his work.

Dumas didn’t just enjoy success as an author, though – he began his literary career with travelogues, magazine articles and theatre scripts, and he continued his travel writing continuously throughout his life. Known for his chattiness and geniality, Dumas was much loved in his lifetime by luminaries in prose and theatre – and had several children following a long string of affairs. He drew on his love of travel to inform his novels, and he was prolific even in his semi-formal exile from France (Napoleon Bonaparte disapproved of him during his reign, and the author thought it wise to vacate the country for Russia). Moving to Italy, he founded a newspaper, the Indipendente, to work towards unification in the country during his three years there.

Dumas returned to Paris in 1864 and began to write books about Italy and Russia, and died in 1870. It was only during the twentieth century that the work of Dumas gained huge popularity, however, and his grave was moved from his birthplace in Aisne to the Panthéon de Paris – the resting place of the foremost figures in French culture. This move was partly to confirm the love and admiration he has since won with so many readers, but it was also a national apology of sorts, in recognition of the racism which Dumas encountered throughout his life.

What about reading Dumas in the streets of Paris, on one of our river cruises through France? Visitors to Paris on river cruises can find the Alexandre Dumas Monument here, where statues of his greatest literary creations sit at his feet – as well as the Paris Metró station named after him – and his country home, the Chateau de Monté Cristo, outside the city.

Article images courtesy of F. Nadar and Douglas Fairbanks Prod/United Artists.