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This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
by David Widger
Readers acquainted with the Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas may wishto see if their favorite passages are listed in this selection. The etexteditor will be glad to add your suggestions. One of the advantages ofinternet over paper publication is the ease of quick revision.
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THE BORGIAS
THE CENCI
MASSACRES OF THE SOUTH
MARY STUART
KARL-LUDWIG SAND
URBAIN GRANDIER
NISIDA
DERUES
LA CONSTANTIN
JOAN OF NAPLES
THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK (The Essay, not the Novel)
MARTIN GUERRE
ALI PACHA
THE COUNTESS DE SAINT GERAN
MURAT
THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS
VANINKA
THE MARQUISE DE GANGES
Dumas's 'Celebrated Crimes' was not written for children. The novelisthas spared no language—has minced no words—to describe the violentscenes of a violent time.
In some instances facts appear distorted out of their true perspective,and in others the author makes unwarranted charges. It is not within ourprovince to edit the historical side of Dumas, any more than it would beto correct the obvious errors in Dickens's Child's History of England.The careful, mature reader, for whom the books are intended, willrecognize, and allow for, this fact.
The contents of these volumes of 'Celebrated Crimes', as well as themotives which led to their inception, are unique. They are a seriesof stories based upon historical records, from the pen of AlexandreDumas, pere, when he was not "the elder," nor yet the author ofD'Artagnan or Monte Cristo, but was a rising young dramatist and alion in the literary set and world of fashion.
Dumas, in fact, wrote his 'Crimes Celebres' just prior to launchingupon his wonderful series of historical novels, and they maytherefore be considered as source books, whence he was to draw somuch of that far-reaching and intimate knowledge of inner historywhich has perennially astonished his readers.