Dumas Alexandrethe Younger

Dumas, Alexandre, the Younger, son of the foregoing, was born in Paris in 1824. He received a good education, accompanied his father to the Mediterranean in 1846, and made his debut as a novelist with La Dame aux Camelias in 1848. This rather morbid product of sentimentalism was clever enough to establish at once its author's reputation; but it hardly gave an idea of his true character, which in every respect offers a strange- antithesis to that of his father. Le Demi-Monde (1855), La Question d'Argent (1857), Les Idees de Meidame Aubray (1867), La Visite de Noces, La Princesse Georges (1871), Monsieur Alphonse (1873), L'Etrang'ere (1876), and Les Danicheff (1876) are among his most successful dramas. After the war of 1870 and the Commune, he wrote several powerful letters to the press on the social aspects of French politics, and his ethical theories have found expression in the prefaces to his published plays and in La Lettre d'un Provincial. Of his novels, which are far less powerful than his dramatic productions, Le Roman dune Femmc (1848), Antonine (1849), Diane de Lys (1851), La Dame aux Peiles (1854), L'Affaire Clemenceaic (1867), Les Fenimes qui mentent et les Eemmes qui volent (1880), La Princesse de Bagdad (1881), and Francillon (1887), have been the most successful. M. Dumas received the Legion of Honour in 1867, and was admitted to the Academy in 1875. He died in 1895.