The success of Monte Cristo coincides with France's Second French Empire. But Dantès has "alter egos" in two other Dumas works in "Pauline" from 1838, and more significantly in "Georges" from 1843, where a young man with black ancestry is preparing a revenge against white people who had humiliated him. As for Dantès, his fate is quite different from his model in Peuchet's book, since the latter is murdered by the "Caderousse" of the plot. The introduction to the Pleiade edition mentions other sources from real life: the Abbé Faria existed and died in 1819 after a life with much resemblance to that of the Faria in the novel. This story, also quoted in the Pleiade edition, has obviously served as model for the chapter of the murders inside the Villefort family. In another of the "True Stories" Peuchet describes a poisoning in a family. This third man, named Loupian, had married Picaud's fiancée while Picaud was under arrest. The third man's son he lured into crime and his daughter into prostitution, finally stabbing the man himself. He stabbed the first with a dagger on which were printed the words, "Number One", and then he poisoned the second. Picaud then spent years plotting his revenge on the three men who were responsible for his misfortune. When the man died, he left his fortune to Picaud whom he had begun to treat as a son. Picaud was placed under a form of house arrest, in the Fenestrelle Fort where he served as a servant to a rich Italian cleric. Peuchet told of a shoemaker, Pierre Picaud, living in Nîmes in 1807, who was engaged to marry a rich woman when three jealous friends falsely accused him of being a spy for England. Dumas included this essay in one of the editions from 1846. as well as several television series, and many movies worked the name 'Monte Cristo' into their titles." The title Monte Cristo lives on in a "famous gold mine, a line of luxury Cuban cigars, a sandwich, and any number of bars and casinos-it even lurks in the name of the street-corner hustle three-card monte."ĭumas wrote that the idea of revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo came from a story in a book compiled by Jacques Peuchet, a French police archivist, published in 1838 after the death of the author. There have been at least twenty-nine motion pictures based on it.
The book was "translated into virtually all modern languages and has never been out of print in most of them. Perhaps no novel within a given number of years had so many readers and penetrated into so many different countries." This popularity has extended into modern times as well. George Saintsbury stated: "Monte Cristo is said to have been at its first appearance, and for some time subsequently, the most popular book in Europe. Day after day, at breakfast or at work or on the street, people talked of little else. is unlike any experience of reading we are likely to have known ourselves, maybe something like that of a particularly gripping television series.
The effect of the serials, which held vast audiences enthralled. Carlos Javier Villafane Mercado described the effect in Europe:
The original work was published in serial form in the Journal des Débats in 1844.
8.1 Film and TV adaptations of the original story.3.1 A chronology of The Count of Monte Cristo and Bonapartism.According to Luc Sante, "The Count of Monte Cristo has become a fixture of Western civilization's literature, as inescapable and immediately identifiable as Mickey Mouse, Noah's flood, and the story of Little Red Riding Hood." The book is considered a literary classic today. However, his plans have devastating consequences for the innocent as well as the guilty. An adventure story primarily concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy and forgiveness, it focuses on a man who is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes from jail, acquires a fortune and sets about getting revenge on those responsible for his imprisonment.
The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. The story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean, and in the Levant during the historical events of 1815–1838 (from just before the Hundred Days to the reign of Louis-Philippe of France). Like many of his novels, it is expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet. It is one of the author's most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers. The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel by French author Alexandre Dumas (Alexandre Dumas père).