Alexandre Dumas

(1802 - 1870)

Alexandre Dumas was a prolific playwright and novelist who published at least a thousand works under his name. Best known for The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, he often wrote with collaborators or had assistants draw up outlines for plots, which he would then turn into books. Known for squandering his vast fortune, he purportedly remarked days before his death, pointing to a coin, “Fifty years ago, when I first entered Paris, I had one louis. Why have they accused me of being extravagant? I have kept that louis. See, there it is!”