Alexandre Dumas

Translated with an Introduction by Robin Buss

The Count of Monte Cristo

In seventeenth-century France, young D'Artagnan initially quarrels with, then befriends, three musketeers and joins them in trying to outwit the enemies of the king and queen

The Three Musketeers

Jordan

“D'Artagnan, my friend, you are brave, you are prudent, you have excellent qualities; but the women will ruin you!"- D’Artagnan says to himself

“Yes, I understand now: to find one woman, you court another. It is the longest road, but certainly the most amusing." -Athos 

We must never look for discretion in first love. First love is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless this joy be allowed to overflow, it will stifle you. 

“Now, I entertain a ridiculous partiality for my head, it seems to suit my shoulders so correctly.” -Aramis

E. L. James

Le comte de Monte-Cristo.

why does no one talk about how FUNNY Dumas is

gray

"Well!" said the Count. "So you have not yet forgotten how I saved your life! Odd; it was already a week ago"

The Three Musketeers is a novel by Alexandre Dumas. Set in the 17th century, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those being his friends Athos, Porthos and Aramis, inseparable friends who live by the motto "all for one, one for all," a motto which is first put forth by d'Artagnan. In genre, The Three Musketeers is primarily a historical novel and adventure. However Dumas also frequently works into the plot various injustices, abuses and absurdities of the ancien regime, giving the novel an additional political aspect at a time when the debate in France between republicans and monarchists was still fierce. The story was first serialized from March to July 1844, during the July monarchy, four years before the French Revolution of 1848 violently established the second Republic. The author's father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas had been a well-known general in France's Republican army during the French revolutionary wars. Although adaptations tend to portray d'Artagnan and the three musketeers as heroes, the novel portrays less appealing characters, who are willing to commit violence over slight insults and through unquestioning loyalty to the king and queen, and treat their servants and supposed social inferiors with contempt and violence.

Draculelle

Hope. Justice. Vengeance. A classic tale you don’t want to miss! Best-selling author Alexandre Dumas--who also wrote The Three Musketeers--tells this heartbreaking yet heroic tale of Edmond Dantes who takes revenge on the men responsible for his unjust fourteen-year imprisonment, keeping him from the woman he loved and the life he was supposed to live. * This widely popular classic, originally written in French, tells a tale of devastating consequences for the innocent as well as the guilty. The Count of Monte Cristo is a must-have for any home library or literary aficionado.

Bella Baxter

Oh Monsieur Dumas, you shaped my youth with your swashbuckling tale of adventure and revenge.  The summer I read this book was probably the best summer of reading I ever had. Absolutely mesmerizing. I have to read it over and over again.

Vicky  Nuñez 

I love Dumas! I had only read the Count of Monte Cristo and did not thought the 3 musketeers could top it, but it did.

Something that caught my attention from the start was each chapter's independence from the rest of the book, which is the product of it's publication as a serial in a newspaper. Each chapter has its own goal as well as a major goal for the entire book.

The Three Musketeers is d'artganan's journey into becoming one and his developing friendship between him and the three inseparables (Athos, Aramis & Porthos). Each of the musketeers & D'artagnan have their own personality, something that distinguish them from the other three.

The book is full of fights, comedy and romance all times four.

There exists invincible power and it answers to many names. Trust that all you read are his machinations, and doubly enjoy the intoxicating, unfettered drama so. Such is my faith that whenever reality bends to coincidence, or he appeals as if there is any god more righteous than himself, I am frustrated like the priest cannot meet for my confession. I feverishly know he is invincible and the book stumbles whenever it pretends he is not.

Geese Fish

ÊOn the 24th of February, 1815, the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, thePharaonÊfrom Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples. As usual, a pilot put off immediately, and rounding the Chateau d'If, got on board the vessel between Cape Morgion and Rion island. Immediately, and according to custom, the ramparts of Fort Saint-Jean were covered with spectators; it is always an event at Marseilles for a ship to come into port, especially when this ship, like theÊPharaon, has been built, rigged, and laden at the old Phocee docks, and belongs to an owner of the city. The ship drew on and had safely passed the strait, which some volcanic shock has made between the Calasareigne and Jaros islands; had doubled Pomegue, and approached the harbor under topsails, jib, and spanker, but so slowly and sedately that the idlers, with that instinct which is the forerunner of evil, asked one another what misfortune could have happened on board. However, those experienced in navigation saw plainly that if any accident had occurred, it was not to the vessel herself, for she bore down with all the evidence of being skilfully handled, the anchor a-cockbill, the jib-boom guys already eased off, and standing by the side of the pilot, who was steering theÊPharaonÊtowards the narrow entrance of the inner port, was a young man, who, with activity and vigilant eye, watched every motion of the ship, and repeated each direction of the pilot. The vague disquietude which prevailed among the spectators had so much affected one of the crowd that he did not await the arrival of the vessel in harbor, but jumping into a small skiff, desired to be pulled alongside thePharaon, which he reached as she rounded into La Reserve basin. When the young man on board saw this person approach, he left his station by the pilot, and, hat in hand, leaned over the ship's bulwarks. He was a fine, tall, slim young fellow of eighteen or twenty, with black eyes, and hair as dark as a raven's wing; and his whole appearance bespoke that calmness and resolution peculiar to men accustomed from their cradle to contend with danger.

Tobias V. Langhoff

This is a really long book (probably because it was serialized and paid by instalment), but it's a relatively easy and riveting read.

Most people know the framework of the story: A strapping young man with everything going for him, Edmond Dantès, is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. 14 years later he escapes, becomes rich, infiltrates the aristocracy of France, and enacts his revenge against the people who had him falsely accused.

Abbé Faria, whom Edmond meets in his prison, is the novel's deus ex machina. He is a very intelligent man, and from Edmond's story he correctly guesses all the details of his betrayal, and who the culprits are. Before his imprisonment, he also discovered clues leading to the giant buried treasure that Edmond later unearths after his escape, and which enables him to enact his revenge at all.

This setup takes surprisingly little time. The bulk of this long novel is about Edmond's plans within plans to enact the most perfect and fitting revenge. After his escape and treasure hunting, the main character Dantès is relegated to the background as the novel skips forward in time. For a while, we don't see his thoughts and his new, adopted persona is as mysterious to us as the other characters. In fact, the first time we see the older Dantès after this time skip is from the viewpoint of a completely new character. When Dantès ceases to be the sole focus of the plot (and narrative voice) after he becomes Count, it allows many interesting subplots to emerge, most of them encircling the drama of the aristocracy in general and in particular the families and friends of the people who had Edmond imprisoned all those years prior.

Even more interestingly, Dantès, who seemed the epitome of youthful perfection before his imprisonment, is eventually even portrayed almost as an antihero, or at least in a much less favorable light. There's never any doubt that he's the protagonist, but his revenge takes on a cruel nature with collateral damage. He is willing to sacrifice the children of two of his enemies, and ends up sacrificing the entire family of one of them (although mostly through negligence).

I was also surprised at some of the subjects tackled by this classic, including lesbianism, infidelity, attempted infanticide and filicide. The historical backdrop is also very interesting. The Napoleonic wars are important to the plot, and we actually meet King Louis XVIII at one point. The death of Ali Pasha of Ioannina is also an important event in the book, although we don't see it first hand; characters in the book are involved in these historical events.

This is not as slow a burn as the page count indicates, but there's still a lot of filler and repetition (perhaps, again, because it was originally serialized). For example, the reader is told (at great length) the truth of Dantès's betrayal three times (once when it occured, once when deduced by the Abbé Faria, and now once when recounted by Caderousse).

I partly read this as a Kindle book, and partly listened to Bill Homewood's narration. He's an outstanding narrator, managing to give each character their own unique voice. In particular, he makes Noirtier sound very menacing, and Danglars sly and weasely.

“Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.”
--
An epic tale over 1200 pages revolving around revenge, schemes, and suffering? I. AM. IN.

I'm truly baffled as to why I haven't picked up this masterpiece before, full of delicious plot twists that would be a mystery to the reader only to be reveled with a great "AHA!" some 300 pages later.
I read the schemes with glee. I cackled at the count's sly conversations. I marveled at the pure drama of SO MANY costume changes. It was so over the top, and I loved every moment of it.

I will not explain the plot, for I think almost everyone is familiar with it by now. But what you should know is that this book revels in the dark side of humanity, only to lift you back up into the light of hope. It is not only fun, but also sure to be an emotional roller coaster with every chapter.

Do not be daunted by the sheer mass of this book, because it is so worth it! It's packed with so much action that I was never bored for a moment, and the pages just flew by.

And with this last quote, I leave my review:
"Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes"

Yaffa

One of my favourite classics and also a MAMMOTH of a read. Took me several months (and a huge amount of willpower) to actually finish its entire 1600s pages. The enormity of it aside, this is one of the best revenge stories ever-written. Although written with endless flourishes, as writers of the 1800s often do, Alexandre Dumas manages to pour so much knowledge and philosophy in the dialogues, especially through The Count himself, which easily makes him my most favourite character ever.

Erika

lenkiuosi prieš Diuma talentą ir keikiu šito puslapio vertinimo sistemą, kuri leidžia duoti tik penkias varganas žvaigždutes, kai šita knyga oi kaip nusipelno jų šimtą kartų daugiau

Pepper

An epic tale of revenge and retribution that remains engaging even to the very last page of this long read. At no point did I feel the story was dragging and in fact I was quite astounded and impressed with the way the revenge plan played out. The Fifth of December has got to be the most suspenseful chapter I have ever read. I was so anxious about what the outcome with Morrell would be till the very end and Dumas paced that chapter to absolute perfection.

Alberto Gallego

What a book! It has been a joy to live the story of Edmond Dantès. There were nights I couldn't stop reading and whole afternoons I was waiting to read it. 

A classic that I could recommend to everyone.

Most definetly one of my favourite books I've read this year. It may have taken me a whole month to read it, but these 1500 pages have been some fun. Goodness, doesn't Alexandre Dumas have an imagination? Some of the plottwists in this book had my mouth hanging open catching flies, and the linking of all the characters, all of them being uncovered as somehow being relevant to one another truly blew my mind. The incredible mind of Alexandre Dumas is very alike to the mind of our main character, Monte Cristo, or, Edmond Dantes. The cunning and smart and slyness of both the author and character are one and the same in my opinion. Edmond and his revenge story is so smart it's a living version of good things comes to those who wait, just rather Edmond most probably replaced good things with revenge. This book was so frantic and chaotic and full of murder and death and robbery and evil and wrongdoings and so many crimes were made public and so many scandals were revealed, it felt so real to me I found myself shocked for words. Something I found even more shocking was one particular circumstance left me in tears, which is honestly something special; a novel of such length, or such age, and of such writting has never made me on the verge of tears. This is the first of this genre to ever make me so emotional. I found it even more shocking how well I understood everything going on! If you're daunted by the concept of maybe the context of the Spaniards and the French and Italians, don't worry, I feel like this book does a wonderful job of making it easy to understand. And if you're daunted by the length of this book, don't worry yourself, it's truly a book which makes you wish it never ended. If you pick it up, you surely won't regret reading it. 

surtified™

I needed at least one woman to have a good ending…

Hannah Yang

Epic. Stunning. Wow. That is all I can say for this brilliant piece of literature that I will sing praises about to anyone I meet. It is a novel that will inspire and terrify; it is a masterpiece of human nature. The Count of Monte Cristo captures intense emotion from pain to remorse to shame, and most importantly hope. It exposes thoughts, reactions, and impulse as well as carefully calculated vengeance. It is also one of the novels (my favorite kind!) where it is sometimes impossible to differentiate between hero and villain, because it is easy to relate to the villains and it is difficult to understand the plight of the heroes.

Reading this novel is like experiencing the story - as you follow Dantès' overwhelming joy to his downfall to his eventual glory, as you learn and perhaps even scheme with him. As new (old) characters are introduced you feel the same hostility towards them, knowing that they will suffer. I almost felt impatient as Dantès' plan unfolded because I wanted them to be punished sooner, and I also felt the aching guilt as Dantès saw the aftermath of his revenge plot. There are few novels that are such a mental roller coaster ride. 

I'm glad I read this in one sitting because I would have been so impatient to find out what would happen next! This book is truly remarkable, and I don't think anything I say in this review will do it justice. Read it!!!

Absolutely wonderful. It was so much fun and the Musketeers’ individual personalities bring so much life to the story. 

Tess Letasz

Barbara Williford

I hate it has take me so long to read this classic. A book that is action packed full of action, adventure, bravery, treachery, romance and villains (although at times it is hard to know exactly who the villains really are) and of course, humor. The three musketeers are tracking down a nemesis, a strong woman villain who is tracking them as well. I couldn’t put this book down! 

Trigger warnings: violence and sexual content

altlovesbooks

Easily the longest book I've read to date.

I know a lot of people really really liked this book, and I definitely see what appeal this book has to everyone. Personally, I really enjoyed the beginning, and up through the (view spoiler)[part of the book we spend with Alfred, Franz, and The Count in Italy (hide spoiler)]. After that, though, I felt like the book really dragged a bit in the middle. There was so much in the way of convoluted plotting that I kept getting mired in the detail and losing sight of what the goals actually were. 

That said, I enjoyed my time with the book. I'm not a revenge person (I honestly don't see what it gets you, because it doesn't ever fix the original problem), but there's a lot for even someone like me to find and enjoy here.

Robin Buss

This translation originally published: 2003.

rumbledethumps

This is a wild ride of a revenge story. But apparently Dumas didn't want it to simply be a revenge story, as he mixes in bits of just about every other popular fictional genre of the time. It is a mystery, a gothic horror, a courtroom drama, a romance, a novel of manners, an adventure story, and who knows what else, all rolled into one massive behemoth of a book that I couldn't put down. (And this was my second time reading it.)

Set in the years following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, this literature classic tells the story Edmond Dantes and of personal honor and revenge.

Who is God? What is right and wrong? Is love merely an emotion or a tangible power?

Daniel K

The man in the iron mask.

Anyaconda

I really disliked the ending and to be honest, they've done such a great job with the movie. Another disappointing classic to add to my list. The main focus was the political intrigue. It was hardly about the man in the iron mask at all 🎭

I had a good time, though it sagged in the middle. Mercedes deserved better. 

Pavonini

Gavin

What a book! Four books, bolted together in the manner of an undergraduate pulling an all-nighter. You can read it as pure Treasure Island / Three Musketeers pulp, if you squint. But underneath is a whole view of human nature, of French Restoration perversity, of class anxiety after the People have vented themselves, and minute details of how French society worked. It contains digressions on merchant shipping, stoner drivel, interest rates, Napoleon's legacy, the ethnography of Parisian opera-goers, Roman cab fare, made up nonsense about Tunisian royalty, optical telegraphs, and I love it. 100 characters. Fun and irreverent and grand and petty and solemn and nerdy. Like a city on wheels.

   
in your place I should say nothing of all these adventures. Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels bound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum, even when they are as gilded as you are capable of being.


Published a chapter at a time, and Dumas was paid by the word, and it shows. But it shows in the other way too: this is a live thing. For once I don't begrudge you your abridged edition: half of this is superfluous. The first 30 chapters are best: joy, betrayal, madness, education, escape, redemption. And Albert is incredibly annoying, and gets 10 chapters. But c'mon, just do a chapter a night for 3 months.

You will put up with heavy telegraphing:

   "...I must go to Paris.”
“Ah, really?—to Paris! and will it be the first time you have ever been there, Dantès?”
“Yes.”
“Have you business there?”
“Not of my own; the last commission of poor Captain Leclere...”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Danglars, and then in a low tone, he added, “To Paris, no doubt to deliver the letter which the grand marshal gave him. Ah, this letter gives me an idea—a capital idea! Ah; Dantès, my friend, you are not yet registered number one on board the good ship Pharaon;” then turning towards Edmond, who was walking away, “A pleasant journey,” he cried.
“Thank you,” said Edmond with a friendly nod, and the two lovers continued on their way, as calm and joyous as if they were the very elect of heaven.


Buss' translation is immaculate. You occasionally see the strain of an odd idiom, but in the same way you see a master athlete flex to pull off something hard.

Dantès is a simple romantic hero; or a heartless villain, a vampire; or a revenant of the revolution. (He isn't a radical, until he is punished for being one.) Or as class anxiety. Dantès the pirate, Dantès the entryist, Dantès the stalker, Dantès the god. The book imagines a perfect impostor, who has learned all the contrived tricks of the aristocracy, and with bottomless pockets. A parvenu you can't detect. A nemesis you don't know about. Betrayal transforms him from a noble peasant to a vicious overlord.(I thought my class-war reading was a stretch until I learned who Dumas' dad was. Dumas saw either side.)

Dantès is, for the latter 3/4 of the book, not good. This isn't a matter of interpretation: he owns slaves, loves executions, and deludes everyone around him with fake virtue and kindness! He is an obsessed agent of narrow justice, a perfect liar, and a 'vampire'. Another instance of how terrible and inhuman justice can be. The novel tacitly condemns Dantès from Chapter 30 onwards: outwardly he lacks feeling (is deadly pale). So we're bad fans.

  
Franz, meanwhile, was thinking about the extraordinary shudder that had passed through the whole of the Count of Monte Cristo’s body at the moment when he was more or less obliged to give Albert his hand. 


Internally, he rages - but to the point of moving entirely beyond passion. Focus as the opposite of emotion. He is a mastermind, an implausibly good planner and reasoner - all in the service of fatal romance.

* The central transformation of the book is much more extreme than Pygmalion or My Fair Lady.

* Its great lesson is that evil can result from mild vice: envy, whim, irritation. The great silly convenience of the plot is the perfect anti-correlation between virtue and success: all of the idle conspirators reach the heights of society for unrelated reasons.

  
"I’m convinced that, sooner or later, a righteous man is rewarded and a wicked one punished."
"You're a man of the cloth, Monsieur l'Abbe," said Caderousse with a bitter look, "and it's your job to say that. But everyone is free to disbelieve what you claim... [Ruin:] That's how God rewards virtue, Monsieur." 



  
On the whole, M. de Villefort made and returned few visits... this was accepted in society, where it was attributed to the amount and gravity of the lawyer's business - when it was, in reality, deliberate arrogance, an extreme example of aristocratic contempt, in short, the application of the maxim: ‘Admire yourself and others will admire you', a hundred times more useful in our day than the Greek one: ‘Know thyself', now replaced by the less demanding and more profitable art of knowing others.


and so Dantes' perfect uber-dickhead counter to Villefort:

  
"despite your reputation as a superior being, you see everything from the vulgar and material point of view of society, beginning and ending with man, that is to say, the most restricted and narrow point of view that human intelligence can adopt.’ 

‘I beg you to explain yourself, sir,’ said Villefort, more and more astonished. I don’t entirely follow...’ 

‘What I’m saying, sir, is that your eyes are fixed on the social organisation of nations that means that you only see the mechanism and not the sublime worker who operates it. I'm saying that you only recognise in front of you and around you those office-holders whose accreditation has been signed by a minister or by the king and that your short-sightedness leads you to ignore those men whom God has set above office-holders, ministers and kings, by giving them a mission to pursue instead of a position to fill. This weakness is inherent in humans, with their feeble and inadequate organs. 

Tobias mistook the angel who had just restored his sight for an ordinary young man. The nations mistook Attila, who would annihilate them, for a conqueror like other conquerors. It was necessary for both to reveal their celestial missions for them to be recognised - for one to say: “I'm the angel of the Lord”, and the other: “I’m the hammer of God”, for their divine essence to be revealed.’ 
‘Does this mean,' Villefort said, increasingly amazed and thinking he must be speaking to a visionary or a madman, ‘that you consider yourself to be like one of these extraordinary beings you have just mentioned?’ 
‘Why not?' Monte Cristo asked coldly. 
"Please forgive me, sir," Villefort continued in bewilderment, "if when I called on you I was not aware that I was to be introduced to a man whose understanding and mind extend so far beyond the 
ordinary knowledge and usual cast of thought of mankind... it is not customary for those who enjoy the privilege of wealth to waste their time in social speculation and philosophical dreams that are rather designed to console those whom fate has deprived of the goods of the earth."


* The adults are corrupt, the youth innocent but trivially corruptible.

* The surprisingly good cartoon adaption, Gankutsuou, focusses on polymorphous homoerotic undertones barely present here. (It also has bad CGI battle robots.)

* Is it money that corrupts him, rather than betrayal and injustice? Dantès is still relatively virtuous, human in the events following his escape. But not when he passes from redeemer to revenant. 

  
three months earlier [he] had wanted nothing except freedom, felt already not free enough, but wanted wealth. It was not the fault of Dantès, but of God who, while limiting the power of man, has created in him infinite desires!



*

  
he was paying the meal the compliment one would expect from a man condemned for four or five months to suffer Italian cooking (which is among the worst in the world).



* On being ransomed to a kidnapper, Luigi:

  
'Signor Luigi,’ Albert continued, ‘are there any other formalities to be completed before we may take leave of Your Excellency?’
‘None at all, sir,’ the bandit said. ‘You are as free as the air.’ 
‘In that case, I wish you a long life and good fortune. Come, gentlemen, come!’ 



* Word count word count word count:

  
a man in a blue jacket, with silk buttons of the same colour, a white waistcoat crossed by a huge gold chain and hazel-coloured trousers, with a head of such black hair, worn so low above the eyebrows that it seemed hardly natural, being so inconsistent with those wrinkles on the forehead that it was unable to disguise; in short, a man of between 50 and 55, trying to look 40, put his head out of the window of a coupe with a baron's crown painted on its door, and sent his groom to enquire of the concierge whether the Count of Monte Cristo was at home. 

As he waited, the man examined the exterior of the house, what could be seen of the garden and the livery of a few servants who might be observed coming and going - and did so with such close attention as to amount almost to impertinence. His eye was sharp, but with more cunning in it than wit or irony. 

His lips were so thin that they vanished inside the mouth instead of protruding from it. Finally, the breadth and prominence of the cheekbones (an infallible sign of shrewdness), the retreating forehead, the bulging occiput which extended well beyond his wide and not in the least aristocratic ears, all contributed to give this gentleman (whom any ordinary person would have thought very respectable in view of his magnificent horses, the enormous diamond he wore in his shirt and the red ribbon that stretched from one buttonhole to another on his coat), a face which to a trained physiognomist betrayed an almost repulsive character.



The book broadened my sense of Romanticism; previously I had a pretty shallow idea of it, as if 100 years of clever people would not produce interesting thoughts as well as pure emoting. Consider the ridiculous faculties and ingenuity of Abbe Faria (competence porn!). It's not about feelings, or, it doesn't begin and end in feeling. It's about will over circumstance, virtue over accident, doing whatever extreme things it takes, to drive a passion into the earth. Romanticism is ridiculous, but it doesn't care about being ridiculous.


  
"Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or, even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognizing it... Your throne will be raised up on the mountain where Satan took Jesus. And, without having to pay him homage, without having to kiss his claw, you will be the sovereign master of all the kingdoms on earth.

Do not be content with just one experiment: as with everything, the senses must become accustomed to a new impression, whether it is pleasant or not, happy or sad. Nature wrestles with this divine substance, because our nature is not made for joy but clings to pain. Nature must be defeated in this struggle, reality must follow dreams; and then the dream will rule, will become the master, the dream will become life and life become a dream. What a difference is made by this transfiguration! When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream for ever. When you leave your world for that of others, you will feel as if you have travelled from spring in Naples to winter in Lapland, from paradise to earth, from heaven to hell. Try some hashish, my friend! Try it!"

The Man in the Iron Mask (Oxford World's Classics)

Gillian Rose

Wildly different from one of my favorite movies. I'm glad I read the other books before this as it gave a more comprehensive look at some of the characters and their actions. I was sad that Philippe didn't have much action though.

Stef

DNF at ~500 pages, which seems like long enough to give it a fair shot. i'm into the revenge!!! thing, but not the (gestures) storytime diversions about every single person in the entirety of Europe.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Reviews

Highlights