When Alexandre was growing up, slavery was still prevalent, and he suffered as a result of being black. Even with Dumas� eventual immense success, popularity, and many connections, his race affected him his entire life. In 1843, he wrote a short story that addressed some of the issues of race and the affects of colonialism.
While growing up, he was told stories of his father's brave military career by his mother. Dumas was also fascinated with French history and the kings and queens that had ruled. Both of these contributed in a large part to Alexandre's imagination and obsession with adventure stories. His father is believed to have been the inspiration for the heroes in the adventure stories he would write throughout his lifetime. His mother was poor and could not provide Alexandre with much. However, books were commonly found strewn all over his room. His love of reading would eventually lead him to write and produce his first plays.
He had no real education, but had beautiful handwriting. This eventually led to a job as a copy clerk where he was further pushed in the direction of writing. He would later turn his attention to writing novels instead of plays. Because there was such an interest in his serial stories published in newspapers, in 1838 he rewrote his play �Le Capitaine Paul,� creating his first serial novel. He would go on to write hundreds of novels to further his fame and fortune. He needed the money because of his poor spending habits and his excessive charity giving.
Before moving to Paris in 1823, he had become good friends with Francois Joseph Talma, who was a famous actor of the time. In 1827 Dumas found his inspiration for his own plays when he saw a production of Hamlet, a play written by William Shakespeare.
In 1830, he participated in the revolution and fought with Lafayette. The revolution resulted in the ousting of the then king Charles X. The king didn�t like the immense popularity of Dumas and in an effort to discredit him, claimed that Dumas' work was a simple plagiarizing of Victor Hugo's work. This resulted in Alexandre�s departure from France. "Impressions de voyage: En Suisse" was a journal of his road trips in Switzerland. This began his travel-writing career. He wrote a number of other books dealing with Italy, Russia and other lands. These works were later combined and published in "Impressions de voyage".
Also in the 1930s, the censorship over the press was lifted which attracted large audiences to the serial novels that began appearing in newspapers. Dumas was, an author of such novels, won instant popularity.
King Charles X would be replaced by Dumas' former copy clerk employer Louis-Philippe. When King Louis-Philippe was ousted in yet another revolt, Alexandre lost his position of favor with the ruling- to now President, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Dumas was forced to flee in 1851 to Brussels, Belgium to escape his creditors. He then traveled to Russia where French was the second spoken language, and he could still maintain his popularity since his books were also enormously popular in Russia.
In March of 1861, the kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, with Victor Emmanuel II as king. For the next three years, Alexandre Dumas would be involved in the fight for a united Italy, and he eventually returned to Paris in 1864. Dumas was an ardent supporter of democracy in France and supported any democratic causes accordingly; he supported all three revolutions in France. The Man in the Iron Mask was written during the second revolution; in part to protest the way French rulers were abusing their powers.
Dumas began writing a successful drama series with the plays he had written. Always re-inventing history for the sake of fiction and drama, he won the respect and admiration of the great writers of the time Alfred de Vigney and Victor Hugo. He wrote "Charles VII chez ses grands vassaux", "Antony", and "Richard Darlington." Overall, readers of all walks endeared him for his accessible style of writing. All of his works were adventuresome page-turners that anyone could read, understand, and appreciate.
