DUMAS PÈRE, ALEXANDRE. Autograph manuscript, handwritten manuscript in French, 27 written pages unsigned, no date, but probably c. 1845. In large folio, c. 445x280 mm., written on the typical thin bluish paper which Dumas often preferred. Not complete, part of a manuscript of the dramatised edition of Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers), probably Vingt ans après (Twenty Years Later).
The manuscript begins with Tableaux VI, scene I, titled: "La tente du general Monck" and ends with scene V, D'Artagnan - Digby.
Folded once horisontally, folding browned and many with horisontal tears, more to the first leaves, some text loss, tears and fraying mostly to margins, slight spotting.
Alexandre Dumas, père (French for 'father') (1802-1870), famous French novelist and dramatist Les Trois Mousquetairesof such historical classic novels as The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45, The Three Musketeers (1844) and The Man in the Iron Mask, many originally published as serials. His works have been translated into many languages, and he is one of the most widely read French authors.
The best known of his works are Les Trois Mousquetaires (first published in serial form in the newspaper "Le Siècle" between March and July 1844, published in Paris at Baudry, 1844 in 8 volumes, performed 1845; Vingt ans après (1845; "Twenty Years After"); Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1844-45; The Count of Monte Cristo); Dix ans plus tard ou le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1848-50; "Ten Years Later; or, The Vicomte de Bragelonne"); and La Tulipe noire (1850; "The Black Tulip").
Dumas wrote two sequels that concerned D'Artagnan and the three musketeers: Vingt ans après (1845; Twenty Years After) and Le Vicomte de Bragelonne; ou, dix ans plus tard (1848-50; The Vicomte de Bragelonne; or, Ten Years Later).
Dumas adapted the novel for the theater, and that two other novels followed him which took up the four main heroes to form the trilogy of the musketeers. Twenty Years Later, published in 1845, and Le Vicomte de Bragelonne published from 1847 to 1850.
The play was staged for the first time on October 27, 1845 on the stage of the Ambigu-Comique theater and it played for 91 times. The publication of the novel Twenty Years Later in Le Siècle had barely been completed, and its theatrical adaptation was therefore a fantastic success.
The Three Musketeers is the most famous of around 250 books to come from the pen of this prolific author and his 73 assistants. Alexandre Dumas worked with the history professor Auguste Maquet, who is often credited with the premise for, and even the first draft of, Les Trois Mousquetaires, although the text, like all his others, plays very fast and loose with the historical narrative. (Encyclopedia Britannica).
Provenance: Per Edward Gustafsson (1893-1966), Swedish collector from Vänersborg. Part of his large autograph- and manuscript collection was donated by himself to the library Carolina Rediviva at Uppsala University.
According to Gustafsson, this manuscript was mentioned in an article in the French magazine "Aux écoutes du monde" in 1955 (article about his manuscript collection in Swedish magazine "Bokvännen" (no. 9, 1965).