Before you leave...
Take 20% off your first order
20% off
Enter the code below at checkout to get 20% off your first order
Alexandre Dumas: The King of Romance (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781448205271)
Vendor:
F. W. J. Hemmings
Product type:
Books
- $17.99
$17.99- $17.99
- Unit price
- per
Subtotal:
$17.99
Description
xThe last of Alexandre Dumas's many mistresses, the American actress Adah Menken, called him "the king of romance." She was not thinking only of his immensely popular novels The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo - everything about Dumas was touched with the spirit of romance, and it is that spirit which this exhilarating biography captures.
There was romance in Dumas's origins. He grew up in the country, the son of a general who fought under Napoleon in Egypt and Italy and whose own parents were a French marquis and a slave from Haiti. As a boy, Dumas's closest friends were local poachers and a gardener whom he once watched cut open a grass snake to liberate a frog. The world was full of magical possibilities, and, in his twenties, after moving to Paris and working as a clerk under the Due d'Orleans, Dumas established himself, with Victor Hugo, as one of the leading Romantic playwrights.
In its scope and richness, Dumas's life bears comparison to those of his fictional heroes. Drawing on Dumas's memoirs and surviving correspondence, Professor Hemmings constructs a fascinating story of a writer whose novels continue to excite our imagination.
Author: F. W. J. Hemmings
ISBN-10: 1448205271
ISBN-13: 9781448205271
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Language: English
Published: 12/20/2012
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.09lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.73d
There was romance in Dumas's origins. He grew up in the country, the son of a general who fought under Napoleon in Egypt and Italy and whose own parents were a French marquis and a slave from Haiti. As a boy, Dumas's closest friends were local poachers and a gardener whom he once watched cut open a grass snake to liberate a frog. The world was full of magical possibilities, and, in his twenties, after moving to Paris and working as a clerk under the Due d'Orleans, Dumas established himself, with Victor Hugo, as one of the leading Romantic playwrights.
In its scope and richness, Dumas's life bears comparison to those of his fictional heroes. Drawing on Dumas's memoirs and surviving correspondence, Professor Hemmings constructs a fascinating story of a writer whose novels continue to excite our imagination.
Author: F. W. J. Hemmings
ISBN-10: 1448205271
ISBN-13: 9781448205271
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Language: English
Published: 12/20/2012
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.09lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.73d
By F. W. J. Hemmings
xFrederick William John Hemmings (1920-1997) was born in Southampton. Hemmings did war service decrypting German codes in the Army Intelligence Corps but in 1946 he returned to academic life in Oxford, completing his DPhil in 1949, a groundbreaking study that was published the following year by Oxford University Press, The Russian Novel in France 1884-1914.
Hemmings really made his mark as a pioneer of Zola studies and is known as the foremost Zola critic in the English-speaking world. Further studies on Zola and Stendhal unfailingly appeared in later years, as did books on two other major 19th-century French writers: The King of Romance: A Portrait of Alexandre Dumas (1979) and Baudelaire the Damned (1982). This project of Balzacian and Zolaesque proportions was realized all the more remarkably during a busy nine-year term of office as head of the French department at Leicester University. Hemmings was a hugely respected literary scholar and Professor of French Literature, Leicester University 1963-85; twice married (one son, one daughter); died Leicester 9 May 1997.Recently Viewed Products
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.