Author. He received recognition as a French author during the 19th century. His grandfather, Alexandre Davie de la Palantiere, was a French nobleman and his grandmother was Marie-Cessette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean who had been a slave in the French colony. His father was sent to France to be educated under his mother's surname of Duma and eventually, became a general in French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's army. After his father's death in 1806, the widowed mother and siblings lived in poverty. Looking for employment, he relocated in 1823 to Paris. With his elegant handwriting, he secured a position with the Duke d'Orleans, who was later King Louis Philippe. He also found his place as a publisher of some obscure magazines and in the theater composing dramas. He participated in the French Revolution in July of 1830, becoming a captain in the National Guard, contracted cholera during the 1832 epidemic, and traveled to Italy to recuperate. Opening on September 22, 1835, his first drama was "La chasse et L'amour." Gaining much success with the drama, he went on to compose additional plays, of which "The Tower of Nesle" is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of French melodrama. It was written in collaboration with Frederic Gaullardet. Gaullardet, who charged Dumas with plagiarism followed by a dual, yet never got his name on the copyright. It is recognized in literary history that Dumas, after being asked, heavily edited then published a drama that Gaullardet originally wrote. Before 1843 he wrote fifteen plays. Historical novels brought Dumas enormous fortune producing some 250 books. Dumas is best known for the historical novels "The Three Musketeers" and "The Count of Monte Cristo," which were both written within the space of two years, from 1844 to 1845. "Cristo" touched on the subject of slavery in the North and South American colonies. The story of the King's Musketeers was continued in his 1845 novel, "Twenty Years After" and "The Vicomte Bragelonne" from 1848 to 1850. In 1850 he wrote "The Black Tulip." In 1851 Dumas escaped his creditors to Brussels. He spent two years there in exile and then returned to Paris and started a daily paper called "Le Mousquetaire." In 1858 he traveled to Russia, and in 1860 he went to Italy, where he supported Garibaldi in Italy's struggle for independence. Called "the King of Paris," he earned fortunes and easily spent the money on friends, art, and mistresses. He was professed to have had dozens of illegitimate children, but he acknowledged only three. His son, Alexandre Dumas Fils, became, like his father, an author and dramatist, yet was a moralist who never accepted his father's lifestyle. Dumas died of a stroke at Puys, near Dieppe. In 2002, his remains were moved from Cimetière de Villers-Cotterêts in Aisne to its new location in the Pantheon in Paris.