The Three Musketeers
- The Three Musketeers
- Wherein D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis meet. The full text of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers.
- Twenty Years After
- The Musketeers vie for power during Louis XIV’s minority.
- Ten Years Later
- Volume 1 of Le Vicomte de Bragellone, the story that includes The Man in the Iron Mask: Raoul sets off the events that lead to the end of the story. Aramis no doubt continues his plottings.
- The Missing Viscount
- There are some chapters missing between “Ten Years Later” and “Louise de la Valliere”. These are the probable chapter titles that belong here.
- Louise de la Valliere
- Volume 3 of Le Vicomte de Bragellone, the Musketeer work which includes The Man in the Iron Mask: Wherein d’Artagnan begins to suspect Aramis of wrongful deeds.
- The Man in the Iron Mask
- Volume 4 of Le Vicomte de Bragellone, also known as The Man in the Iron Mask. Aramis’ plot succeeds or fails.
More about Dumas and the Musketeers
- The History of Dumas’s Musketeers
- The Real History of the Musketeers! Information about some of the historical characters that Dumas used for “The Three Musketeers” and “Le Vicomte de Bragellone”.
- Review: La Prise du Puvoir Par Louis XIV
- The latest Musketeer movie has brought a huge number of questions about how it fits with the books.
- Short stories by Dumas
- Some short stories—well, one at the moment—by Alexandre Dumas.
- Son of Porthos, and other Musketeer books in Finland
- A summary of a lesser-known Musketeer work, Son of Porthos, which may or may not be genuine: Onnea Hast wrote and told me what the heck “Son of Porthos” was.
- The Three Musketeers FLA
- The latest Musketeer movie has brought a huge number of questions about how it fits with the books and about the Musketeers in general.
- A Fistful of Dumas
- All of the Three Musketeers. One file. This one’s gonna be big.
More Information
- Alexandre Dumas père
- Best collection of Dumas links yet. Most of the links are presented in both English and French. This has a wide variety of bibliographic, biographic, and uncategorizable links listed as well as some of the plays of Dumas, including a translation into English of Dumas’ translation into French of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Translate from French
- Cardinal Richelieu at Lucidcafé
- A short synopsis of Cardinal Richelieu’s effect on the French monarchy.
- Club Dumas
- On-line chat area for talking about Dumas and his works.
- D’Artagnan’s death at the 1673 siege of Maastricht
- “The statue portrays the glorious musketeer Charles de Batz-Castelmore, better known as d’Artagnan, who perished in 1673 during the siege of Maastricht by the armies of the French king Louis XIV.”
- The Real d’Artagnan
- “The portrait Dumas paints of d’Artagnan in The Three Musketeers is iconic: a penniless young Gascon who sets off for Paris on a horse that has seen better days, armed with his father’s sword, an ointment his mother made that ‘miraculously heals any wound that doesn’t reach the heart’, and a letter of recommendation to M. de Trèville, captain of the King’s Musketeers. From such humble beginnings are heroes made. But, how accurate a portrait is it?”
- Roman et Histoire
- Something in French about the Three Musketeers and their basis in real history. “The three musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis, are respectively identified as Armand de Sillègue d’Athos d’Autevielle (1615-1644), Isaac de Portau, and Henri d’Aramitz (died 1674). Few common points link these three men and the characters of the novel but the fact that they all belonged to the company of Tréville. Henri d’Aramitz was abbot laic in his native village. He thus belonged just like Aramis to the religious body. Henri d’Aramitz and Isaac de Portau were cousins distant from Armand de Sillègue (who according to his name perhaps belonged to the nobility like Athos). Dumas thus modified these characters in their allotting features of well defined natures and by changing their age.” Translate from French
- Swashbucklers and Fops—Alexandre Dumas père
- A nice page about the books and how they fit together. Built around a swashbuckling legends web page. If you are interested in Dumas or swashbucklers, you should read this page!
A bit about the Three Musketeers
As the maintainer of the site with the coolest version of Iron Mask, I’ve been asked a few things about it. Namely, where the heck does it come from, and why doesn’t it look the same as yours?
The answer is this: there is no such book as “The Man in the Iron Mask”, at least not as Dumas wrote it. He wrote a book called “Le Vicomte de Bragellone” and subtitled it “Ten Years Later”. It was thousands of pages long. Publishers balked (for good reason, I think) at publishing a single book of that length, so they broke it into the three or four parts. There are two versions of “The Man in the Iron Mask” that you can actually buy. The larger version contains the last half of what is generally called “Louise de la Valliere”—otherwise, what is generally the third part, “Iron Mask”, actually starts practically in the middle of a conversation.
There are generally considered five books in the Three Musketeers saga. The first and the last are usually easy to find. The middle three are usually hidden deep in the bowels of your local library, often disguised as the “collected” Alexandre Dumas. I’ve looked on Amazon.Com and joined their associates program in order to help you buy these books if you want to. Oxford World’s Classics has brought out a complete run, which makes it easier to get the whole set without having to worry about whether you’ve successfully got everything in the three-to-four book Man in the Iron Mask confusology:
- The Three Musketeers•—everyone knows about it.
- Twenty Years After•—no one knows about it.
- Le Vicomte de Bragelonne•—the beginning of the end.
- Louise de la Valliere•—the continuation of the end.
- The Man in the Iron Mask•—the end of the end.
There are two other books that I have not read. They are both out of print:
- D’Artagnan the King Maker: A Historical Novel•. While listed as authored by Alexandre Dumas, it apparently is a semi-forgery. See Arthur Rypinski’s review for more information. Arthur also notes that the Library of Congress has a listing for another book translated by Henry Llewellyn Williams, the same translator as “King Maker”, “D’Artagnan's Exploit”. Whether this is real, a Dumas play converted to a novel, or an out-and-out forgery is up for grabs.
- Son of Porthos•. Still a bit murky, but see below for more information. This is also almost certainly not a Dumas work.
If you have any more information about those or other titles, please let me know.
The Three Musketeers is actually two books. The Four Musketeers starts after D’Artagnan receives his commission. It has always been included in The Three Musketeers in my experience; the only reference I’ve heard of is from William Roberts, who says that in Dumas’ own journals, he counts them separately. Which would make six books, not five.
Ten Years Later, Vicomte, Louise, and Iron Mask are really all the same book. You can’t open up the Iron Mask and expect to have any idea of what’s going on, unless you’ve read the other three. You can get away with just reading Louise to understand Iron Mask, and in fact some versions of Iron Mask include the last chapters of Valliere. As far as Dumas was concerned, they’re all one book, called “Le Vicomte de Bragellone”, and subtitled “Ten Years Later”.
And if that doesn’t fully confuse you, read what Onnea Hast compiled about an even later Musketeer book by (or not by) Dumas, as well as some non-Dumas books.
