The last of Alexandre Dumas's many mistresses, the American actress Adah Menken, called him "the king of romance." She was not thinking only of his immensely popular novels The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo - everything about Dumas was touched with the spirit of romance, and it is that spirit which this exhilarating biography captures.

There was romance in Dumas's ori-gins. He grew up in the country, the son of a general who fought under Napoleon in Egypt and Italy and whose own parents were a French marquis and a slave from Haiti. As a boy, Dumas's...

First published in 1982, this penetrating, immensely readable biography of the brilliant poet, translator, and art critic, F. W. J. Hemmings gives us a fascinating new perspective on Baudelaire's extraordinary, complex personality, his artistic achievements, and his tormented life.

Hemmings, the noted biographer of Zola and Alexandre Dumas, has drawn on a great volume of material for this work, much of which came to light as late at the 70s. He shows how Baudelaire's unhappy childhood and the mixture of strong affection and bitter resentment in his feelings for his mother provide the...

This book, first published in 1987, complements the author's earlier volume on Culture and Society in France 1848-1898. It deals with the interaction of social history and cultural history, covering in succession the Revolutionary period, the Napoleonic Empire, the Restoration and the July Monarchy. The scope of the book embraces literature (the drama, poetry and the novel), the art of the Revolution and of Romanticism, and to a lesser extent music (including the opera), sculpture and architecture.

Influential figures such as Jacques-Louis David, Stendhal, Berlioz, Victor Hugo...