Alexandre Dumas (July 24, 1802 – December 5, 1870) was a writer who was bigger than life, large hearted, expansive, egotistical (though in an endearing way) and verbal. He could talk forever, especially when the subject happened to be himself. He was also the kind of writer who would have made a fortune in Hollywood had he born a century later than his actual birth in 1802 to a French nobleman and a freed black slave in the French colony, Saint Domingue, now Haiti. He began his a career as a successful playwright, but soon took to the novel form and the 19th Century practice of extending story lines for serial publication. Like many novelists of that era, Dumas was comfortable with volume and the organic growth of plot lines intersecting and crossing one another from their common origin at the story’s beginning, known today as the inciting incident. Many of his works have been made into movies, and more than one of his works (The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo) have been adapted to the silver screen several times over several generations. Although Dumas was married, like many members of the French nobility, he was well known for his numerous affairs, mistresses and children born out of wedlock. A man of great appetites Dumas died at the age of 68 in 1870 and was buried in the Pantheon.
