CELEBRATED CRIMES
By Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
A good novelist needs be a good historian. Alexandre Dumas was a novelist who knew his history. At least in his early works, he was meticulous in his research. This series of books are histories which place most romantic novels in the shade; they cover many centuries and many lands—those concerning the Rennaissance Popes are especially intriguing.
CONTENTS
PASSAGES FROM EACH VOLUME
NOTE
Dumas's 'Celebrated Crimes' was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language—has minced no words—to describe the violent scenes of a violent time.
INTRODUCTION
The contents of these volumes of 'Celebrated Crimes', as well as the motives which led to their inception, are unique. They are a series of stories based upon historical records, from the pen of Alexandre Dumas, pere, when he was not "the elder," nor yet the author of D'Artagnan or Monte Cristo, but was a rising young dramatist and a lion in the literary set and world of fashion.
Dumas, in fact, wrote his 'Crimes Celebres' just prior to launching upon his wonderful series of historical novels, and they may therefore be considered as source books, whence he was to draw so much of that far-reaching and intimate knowledge of inner history which has perennially astonished his readers. The Crimes were published in Paris, in 1839-40, in eight volumes, comprising eighteen titles—all of which now appear in the present carefully translated text. The success of the original work was instantaneous. Dumas laughingly said that he thought he had exhausted the subject of famous crimes, until the work was off the press, when he immediately became deluged with letters from every province in France, supplying him with material upon other deeds of violence! The sub