Google honoured Alexandre Dumas by dedicating a doodle to him on August 28. Dumas was one of the most revered French authors of the 19th century, he produced a prolific body of work that continues to thrill readers around the world today.
In the doodle, the search engine giant presented a visual representation of an abbreviated version of one of Dumas’ most famous novels, Le Comte de Monte Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo) to mark the anniversary of the publication of its first installment.
On this day in 1884, the Parisian newspaper Les Journal des Débats (The Journal of Debates) published the first installment of the novel.
Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was born in Villers-Cotterêts, France in 1802. He would later assume the surname of his paternal grandmother Marie-Césette Dumas, a woman of African descent and a slave in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti).
As a child, Dumas was regaled with stories of his late father’s exploits as a general, elements of which later found their way into some of the writer’s most famous works.
Before becoming a novelist, Dumas found success as a playwright when he moved to Paris in 1822. In the 1840s, he hit upon monumental success with his action-packed serialized novels, including Les Troi Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers), which was published in 1844.
Dumas’ works have made him one of the most popular French authors in the world and his books have been translated into over 100 languages.
In the late 1980s, a long-lost Dumas novel was uncovered in Paris’ National Library of France. Titled Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine (The Last Cavalier), the book was finally published in 2005.
