Alexandre Dumas fils
1824–1895
Biography
Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–1895) was a French novelist and playwright. He was the son of the far more famous Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, and the two should not be confused. The son is remembered above all for the romantic novel La Dame aux Camélias, published in 1848, and he later wrote plays about morality, marriage and the relations between fathers and sons. He was elected to the Académie française in 1874.
The novel's courtesan heroine made the story famous across Europe. It was adapted for the stage, and Giuseppe Verdi's opera La traviata (1853) is based on the same story. The book reached China through Lin Shu, whose version appeared under the title 巴黎茶花女遺事. The Chinese name 小仲馬 reflects two choices. Lin Shu rendered the family name 仲馬 from the pronunciation of the Fuzhou dialect, and the prefix 小 (little, young) distinguishes the son from his father, corresponding to the French word fils, meaning son.
The site holds 巴黎茶花女遺事, Lin Shu's Chinese version of La Dame aux Camélias, under the author's Chinese name. It shows how a French novel of the 1840s reached Chinese readers at the turn of the twentieth century.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
巴黎茶花女遺事
by 小仲馬 (translated by 林紓)
A young man recounts his love for a Parisian courtesan who gives up her patron's wealth for him and then dies young. Lin Shu's 1899 version of Dumas fils, made with Wang Shouchang, was China's first widely read Western novel.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.