The Three Musketeers (Macmillan Collector's Library) - Hardcover

The Three Musketeers follows the career of an impoverished young gentleman, D'Artagnan, who sets off to Paris to seek fortune as a member of the King's guard. Once there, he meets Porthos, Athos and Aramis, the musketeers of the book's title, and embarks on a daring and exciting series of adventures. France is under threat, and the friends must use all their guile and ingenuity to outwit the dastardly schemes of Cardinal Richelieu and the glamorous spy, Milady. The Three Musketeers is as fresh and entertaining today as when it was first written. This edition has been sensitively abridged. With an Afterword by Peter Harness.

Alexandre Dumas was born in 1802. After a childhood of extreme poverty, he took work as a clerk, and met the renowned actor Talma, and began to write short pieces for the theatre. After twenty years of success as a playwright, Dumas turned his hand to novel-writing, and penned such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), La Reine Margot (1845) and The Black Tulip (1850). After enduring a short period of bankruptcy, Dumas began to travel extensively, still keeping up a prodigious output of journalism, short fiction and novels. He fathered an illegitimate child, also called Alexandre, who would grow up to write La Dame aux Camelias. He died in Dieppe in 1870.