Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–95,) known as Dumas fils, was a French dramatist and novelist. He was one of the founders of “problem play” style—realistic drama treating some contemporaneous ill and offering suggestions for its remedy. The illegitimate son of Alexandre Dumas père, his work stands in stark contrast to his father’s high-spirited historical romances.
Born in Paris, Dumas fils joined the literary society to which his father belonged at the age of 16 after training at the Institution Goubaux and the College Bourbon. Dumas fils first wrote fiction, and then pivoted, with equal success, to drama and theoretical writings on art, morals, politics, and even religion.
Dumas fils’s novels include La Dame aux Camélias (1852; The Lady with the Camellias, 1856) and L ‘Affaire Clemenceau (1864; Wife Murder; or, The Clemenceau Tragedy, 1866)
La Dame aux Camélias, known in English as Camille, is the story of a courtesan named Marguerite Gautier who breaks the heart of her lover, Armand Duval, to spare him from ruin. Dumas fils wrote it in four weeks. First acted in 1852, it became one of the outstanding theatrical successes of the second half of the 19th century. It was the basis of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata (1853.)
Dumas fils’s later didactic plays, such as Les idées de Madame Aubray (1867,) helped trigger French social reform. Dumas fils also completed and produced his father’s Joseph Balsamo (1878.)
Among Dumas fils’s most exciting plays are Le Fils naturel (1858; “The Natural Son”) and Un Père prodigue (1859,) a dramatization of Dumas’s interpretation of his father’s disposition.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Alexandre Dumas fils
Men and women go to the theatre only to hear of love, and to take part in the pains or in the joys that it has caused. All the other interests of humanity remain at the door.
—Alexandre Dumas fils
Esteem money neither more nor less than it deserves, it is a good servant and a bad master.
—Alexandre Dumas fils
Topics: Money
Memory is a paradise out of which fate cannot drive us.
—Alexandre Dumas fils
The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to bear them, and sometimes three.
—Alexandre Dumas fils
Topics: Difficulty
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