The Three Musketeers Complete Series

Set in 1625, "The Three Musketeers" recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard. Although D'Artagnan is not able to join this elite corps immediately, he befriends the three most formidable musketeers of the age: Athos, Porthos and Aramis and gets involved in affairs of the state and court. Dumas frequently works into the plot various injustices, abuses and absurdities of the old regime, giving the story an additional political aspect at a time when the debate in France between republicans and monarchists was still fierce. The novel Twenty Years After follows events in France during the Fronde, during the childhood reign of Louis XIV. The musketeers are valiant and just in their efforts to protect young Louis XIV and the doomed Charles I from their attackers. The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Vallière and The Man in the Iron Mask are set between 1660 and 1667 against the background of the transformation of Louis XIV from child monarch to Sun King. Alexandre Dumas, père (1802-1870) was a French writer whose works have been translated into nearly 100 languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors. His most famous works are The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

Set in 1625, "The Three Musketeers" recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard. Although D'Artagnan is not able to join this elite corps immediately, he befriends the three most formidable musketeers of the age: Athos, Porthos and Aramis and gets involved in affairs of the state and court. Dumas frequently works into the plot various injustices, abuses and absurdities of the old regime, giving the story an additional political aspect at a time when the debate in France between republicans and monarchists was still fierce. The novel Twenty Years After follows events in France during the Fronde, during the childhood reign of Louis XIV. The musketeers are valiant and just in their efforts to protect young Louis XIV and the doomed Charles I from their attackers. The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Vallière and The Man in the Iron Mask are set between 1660 and 1667 against the background of the transformation of Louis XIV from child monarch to Sun King. Alexandre Dumas, père (1802-1870) was a French writer whose works have been translated into nearly 100 languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors. His most famous works are The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

"We read The Three Musketeers to experience a sense of romance and for the sheer excitement of the story," reflected Clifton Fadiman. "In these violent pages all is action, intrigue, suspense, surprise--an almost endless chain of duels, murders, love affairs, unmaskings, ambushes, hairbreadth escapes, wild rides. It is all impossible and it is all magnificent." First published in 1844, Alexandre Dumas's swashbuckling epic chronicles the adventures of D'Artagnan, a gallant young nobleman who journeys to Paris in 1625 hoping to join the ranks of musketeers guarding Louis XIII. He soon finds himself fighting alongside three heroic comrades--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis--who seek to uphold the honor of the king by foiling the wicked plots of Cardinal Richelieu and the beautiful spy "Milady." "Dumas will be read a hundred, nay, three hundred years on," wrote John Galsworthy. "His greatest creation is undoubtedly D'Artagnan, type at once of the fighting adventurer and of the trusty servant, whose wily blade is ever at the back of those whose hearts have neither his magnanimity nor his courage. Few, if any, characters in fiction inspire one with such belief in their individual existences. . . . To one who made D'Artagnan all shall be forgiven." Clifton Fadiman agreed: "Dumas enjoyed writing his stories. . . . The pleasure he must have felt in creating D'Artagnan's troubles and triumphs flashes out of these pages. . . . Dumas rampaged through the history of France, inventing, changing, distorting--doing whatever was needed to produce a tale to hold the reader breathless."

For the first time in English in over a century, a new translation of the forgotten sequel to Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, continuing the dramatic tale of Cardinal Richelieu and his implacable enemies. In 1844, Alexandre Dumas published The Three Musketeers, a novel so famous and still so popular today that it scarcely needs introduction. Shortly thereafter he wrote a sequel, Twenty Years After, that resumed the adventures of his swashbuckling heroes. Later, toward the end of his career, Dumas wrote The Red Sphinx, another direct sequel to The Three Musketeers that begins, not twenty years later, but a mere twenty days afterward. The Red Sphinx picks up right where the The Three Musketeers left off, continuing the stories of Cardinal Richelieu, Queen Anne, and King Louis XIII—and introducing a charming new hero, the Comte de Moret, a real historical figure from the period. A young cavalier newly arrived in Paris, Moret is an illegitimate son of the former king, and thus half-brother to King Louis. The French Court seethes with intrigue as king, queen, and cardinal all vie for power, and young Moret soon finds himself up to his handsome neck in conspiracy, danger—and passionate romance! Dumas wrote seventy-five chapters of The Red Sphinx, all for serial publication, but he never quite finished it, and so the novel languished for almost a century before its first book publication in France in 1946. While Dumas never completed the book, he had earlier written a separate novella, The Dove, that recounted the final adventures of Moret and Cardinal Richelieu. Now for the first time, in one cohesive narrative, The Red Sphinx and The Dove make a complete and satisfying storyline—a rip-roaring novel of historical adventure, heretofore unknown to English-language readers, by the great Alexandre Dumas, king of the swashbucklers.

The courageous musketeers—Athos, D'Artagnan, Aramis, and Porthos—return to sword fighting in the final installment of the D'Artagnan Romances. When Aramis visits the Bastille, an infamous French prison, he meets a mysterious man who wears an iron mask and claims to be the King of France's secret twin brother. While France suffers under King Louis XIV's rule, Aramis initiates an elaborate plan to free the prisoner and overthrow the corrupt king with the masked man's help. Will the musketeers survive their most daring adventure yet, filled with nefarious politics, deceitful royals, and clashing loyalties? This is an unabridged English translation of French author Alexandre Dumas's swashbuckling historical novel, which was first published in serial form between 1847 and 1850.

This premium quality large print edition contains the complete and unabridged classic version of The Three Musketeers, printed on heavyweight, bright white paper in a large 7.44"x9.69" format, with a fully laminated full-color cover featuring an original design. One of the most widely-read and best-known historical adventure novels of all time, The Three Musketeers has delighted readers for generations since it first appeared in 1844. Filled with action and adventure, the novel depicts actual historical events more closely than most would imagine. Dumas' wit and sense of humor is woven throughout, creating a highly entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable tale which has become a truly timeless classic with readers around the world. The year is 1625 and France is ruled by King Louis XIII, weak, indecisive, and heavily influenced by his Minister, Cardinal Richelieu. Young D'Artagnan, brash and provincial, arrives in Paris hoping to become a member of the King's Musketeers, and almost immediately offends three members of that elite corps, Porthos, Aramis, and Athos. Arranging separate but virtually simultaneous duels with each, the four meet but instead of dueling among themselves they band together when attacked by the Cardinal's guards. The four become fast friends, and, when asked by D'Artagnan's landlord to find his missing wife, embark upon a series of adventures that embroils them in the intrigues of the Royal Court and the machinations of Cardinal Richelieu and his most dangerous agent, a beautiful young spy known simply as "Milady," who will stop at nothing to disgrace the Queen, advance the agenda of her master, and take her revenge upon the four friends who have interfered with her schemes. Alexandre Dumas (born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, 1802-1870), was a French playwright, novelist, essayist and magazine and travelogue writer. One of the most widely read French authors, his works have been translated into nearly 100 languages. Best known today for his historical adventure novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, his works, comprising some 100,000 pages, have been the basis for nearly 200 films. Dumas' father, a General born in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) to a French nobleman and an African slave, used his aristocratic rank to help Alexandre secure a position with Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orl�ans. With the accession of Louis-Napol�on in 1851, Dumas fell out of favor, moving to Belgium for several years before relocating to Russia and then Italy before returning to Paris in 1864. The married Dumas carried on numerous affairs, perhaps with as many as forty different women, fathering at least four and possibly as many as seven illegitimate children, including a boy named after him. This son, a successful novelist and playwright, became known as Alexandre Dumas, fils (son), while the father became known as Alexandre Dumas, p�re (father). His last novel, The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, unfinished at his death, was completed by another writer and published in 2005, becoming a bestseller. In 2008 a translation was published in English as The Last Cavalier.