Dumas, Alexandre (père) - A. Craig Bell (essay date 1988)
A. Craig Bell (essay date 1988)
SOURCE: Foreword to Fernande: The Story of a Courtesan, by Alexandre Dumas, translated by A. Craig Bell, Robert Hale, 1988, pp. 5-8.
[In the following essay, Bell provides a brief examination of the influences behind Femande, Dumas's story of an upper-class prostitute.]
To the reader who knows only the Dumas of the historical romances this naturalistic novel of contemporary Parisian society with a courtesan as its 'heroine' will come as a surprise, and he will almost certainly wonder as to the reasons for his writing it. A brief explanation, then.
In 1842 Dumas wrote his second1, and one of his best, historical romances, namely Le Chevalier d'Harmental (better known in England as The Conspirators) after which, surprisingly, between that year and 1844 (year of the ever-famous Les Trois Mousquetaires) he wrote no less than seven novels of which three are...
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