Drama:
Le Bijou de la reine, wr. 1845, pr. 1855
La Dame aux camélias, pr., pb. 1852 (Camille, 1856)
Diane de Lys, pb. 1852
Le Demimonde, pr., pb. 1855 (The Demi-Monde, 1858)
La Question d’argent, pr., pb. 1857 (The Money-Question, 1915)
Le Fils naturel, pr., pb. 1858 (The Natural Son, 1879)
Un Père prodigue, pr., pb. 1859
L’Ami des femmes, pr., pb. 1864 (The Woman’s Friend, 1928)
Les Idées de Madame Aubray, pr., pb. 1867 (Madame Aubray’s Ideas, 1931)
Théâtre complet, pb. 1868-1898 (8 volumes)
Une Visite de noces, pr., pb. 1871
La Princesse Georges, pr. 1871 (Princess George, 1881)
La Femme de Claude, pr., pb. 1873 (The Wife of Claude, 1905)
Monsieur Alphonse, pr. 1873 (English translation, 1886)
L’Étrangère, pr. 1876 (The Foreigner, 1881)
La Princesse de Baghdad, pr., pb. 1881
Denise, pr., pb. 1885 (English translation, 1885)
Francillon, pr., pb. 1887 (English translation, 1893)
Théâtre complet: Théâtre des autres, pb. 1894-1895 (2 volumes)
Long Fiction:
Aventures de quatre femmes et d’un perroquet, 1846-1847 (6 volumes)
Césarine, 1848
La Dame aux camélias, 1848 (2 volumes; Camille, 1857)
Le Docteur Servans, 1848-1849 (2 volumes)
Antoine, 1849 (2 volumes)
Trois Hommes forts, 1850 (4 volumes; Three Strong Men, 1878)
Diane de Lys, 1851 (3 volumes)
Le Régent Mustel, 1852 (2 volumes)
La Dame aux perles, 1853 (4 volumes; Annette: Or, The Lady of the Pearls, 1891)
Un Cas de rupture, 1854
L’Affaire Clémenceau: Mémoire de l’accusé, 1866 (The Clemenceau Case, 1890)
Short Fiction:
Contes et nouvelles, 1853
Poetry:
Péchés de jeunesse, 1847
Nonfiction:
L’Homme-femme, 1872 (Man-Woman: Or, The Hearth, the Street, 1873)
Entr’actes, 1878-1879 (3 volumes)
Les Femmes qui tuent et les femmes qui votent, 1880
Noveau entr’actes, 1890
Illegitimate son of the famous quadroon novelist and a Belgian dressmaker, the younger Alexander Dumas (dyew-mah) was born in Paris on July 27, 1824. Though Dumas fils (fees), or son, inherited the artistic skills of his dissipated father, he was temperamentally more attuned to his sensible mother. Responding to his father’s financial reverses, Dumas began his own literary career. He published a book of poems in 1847, followed the next year by a novel, Camille. He quickly adapted his sentimental but highly moralistic novel into one of the most successful plays of all time.
Although Dumas became a rich man through sixteen skillfully constructed and polished plays, featuring such famous performers as Sarah Bernhardt, he is remembered today almost entirely for Camille. Its heroine, a courtesan redeemed by true love and early death, was modeled after a woman he himself had loved briefly but intensely. In sympathetically portraying a tragic outcast, even while upholding the standards she defied, Dumas earned a place as a pioneer writer of problem plays. A stage vehicle for the most famous actresses of the last half of the nineteenth century, Camille became an early film role for Alla Nazimova, Lillian Gish, and, most notably, Greta Garbo. Giuseppe Verdi’s operatic version, La Traviata (1835), is even better known. Dumas died in Paris at the age of seventy-one.