My Memoirs, Vol. I, 1802 to 1821

The translator has, in the main, followed the edition published at Brussels in 1852-56, in the Preface to which the publishers state that they have printed from le manuscrit autographe of the author. They furthermore print a letter from Dumas, dated Brussels, 23rd December 1851, in which Dumas says:
Je vous offre donc, mon cher Meline, de revoir moi-même les épreuves de votre réimpression, et de faire de votre édition de Bruxelles la seule édition complète qui paraîtra à l'étranger.
The translation has been collated ( a ) with the current edition, and ( b ) with the original edition published in Paris in 1852-55, and certain omitted passages have been restored. Dumas' spelling of proper names has been followed save in a few cases deemed to be misprints.
THESE MEMOIRS ARE DEDICATED TO THE HONOURABLE
COUNT ALFRED D'ORSAY
MY FELLOW-CRAFTSMAN AND MY BOSOM FRIEND
ALEXANDRE DUMAS


There is no real biography of Alexandre Dumas. Nobody has collected and sifted all his correspondence, tracked his every movement, and pursued him through newspapers and legal documents. Letters and other papers (if they have been preserved) should be as abundant in the case of Dumas as they are scanty in the case of Molière. But they are left to the dust of unsearched offices; and it is curious that in France so little has been systematically written about her most popular if not her greatest novelist. Many treatises on one or other point in the life and work of Dumas exist, but there is nothing like Boswell's Johnson or Lockhart's Scott. The Mémoires by the novelist himself cover only part of his career, Les Enfances Dumas ; and they bear the same resemblance to a serious conscientious autobiography as Vingt Ans Après bears to Mr. Gardiner's History of England. They contain facts, indeed, but facts beheld through the radiant prismatic fancy of the author, who, if he had a good story to tell, dressed it up with a cocked hat and a sword, as was the manner of an earlier novelist. The volumes of travel, and the delightful work on Dumas's domestic menagerie, Mes Bêtes , also contain personal confessions, as does the novel, Ange Pitou , with the Causeries , and other books. Fortunately Dumas wrote most about his early life, and the early life of most people is more interesting than the records of their later years.