With an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wren, University of Kent at Canterbury.

The story of Edmund Dantes, self-styled Count of Monte Cristo, is told with consummate skill. The victim of a miscarriage of justice, Dantes is fired by a desire for retribution and empowered by a stroke of providence. In his campaign of vengeance, he becomes an anonymous agent of fate. The sensational narrative of intrigue, betrayal, escape, and triumphant revenge moves at a cracking pace. Dumas‘ novel presents a powerful conflict between good and evil embodied in an epic saga of rich diversity that is complicated by the hero’s ultimate discomfort with the hubristic implication of his own actions. Our edition is based on the most popular and enduring translation first published by Chapman and Hall in 1846. The name of the translator was never revealed.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was a French writer renowned for his historical adventure stories, which have made him one of the most widely-read French authors in the world. Literary critics tend to dismiss his work, partly because of the sheer volume, but his novels have always been enormously popular and the huge number of film adaptions of his most famous works, including ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ and ‘The Three Musketeers’, demonstrate the lasting appeal of his classic adventures.