The Three Musketeers

"The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, pere. It recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to become a musketeer. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis-inseparable friends who live by the motto, "One for all, and all for one".

The story of d'Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragelonne. Those three novels by Dumas are together known as the D'Artagnan Romances.

The Three Musketeers was first published in serial form in the magazine Le Siecle between March and July 1844. Dumas claimed it was based on manuscripts he had discovered in the Bibliotheque Nationale. It was later proven that Dumas had based his work on the book Memoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan, capitaine lieutenant de la premiere compagnie des Mousquetaires du Roi (Memoirs of Mister d'Artagnan, Lieutenant Captain of the first company of the King's Musketeers) by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (Cologne, 1700). The book was borrowed from the Marseille public library, and the card-index remains to this day; Dumas kept the book when he went back to Paris." (Quote from wikipedia.org)

About the Author

"Alexandre Dumas, pere (French for "father", akin to Senior in English), born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (July 24, 1802-December 5, 1870) was a French writer, best known for his numerous historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world. Many of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne were serialized, and he also wrote plays and magazine articles and was a prolific correspondent.

Alexandre Dumas' paternal grandparents were Marquis Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French noblem