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The Three Musketeers (French: Les Trois Mousquetaires [le tʁwɑ muskətɛːʁ]) is a historical adventure novel written in 1844 by French author Alexandre Dumas. It is in the swordsman genre, which has heroic and chivalrous swordsmen who fight for justice.

Set between 1625 and 1628, it chronicles the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan (a character based on Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan) after he leaves his home to travel to Paris, hoping to join the Musketeers of the guard. Although d'Artagnan cannot join this elite corps immediately, he befriends three of the most formidable musketeers of the day: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, "the three inseparable", and engages in affairs of state and Cut.

The Three Musketeers is primarily an adventure and historical novel. However, Dumas frequently portrays various injustices, abuses, and absurdities of the Old Regime, giving the novel additional political meaning at the time of publication, a time when debate in France between republicans and monarchists was still fierce. The story was first serialized from March to July 1844, during the July Monarchy, four years before the French Revolution of 1848 violently established the Second Republic.

D'Artagnan's story continues in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later.

Book Summary
Alexandre Dumas' most famous tale, and arguably the most famous historical novel of all time, in a beautiful hardcover volume.

Set in France during the 1620s, this epic cavalry, honor, and derbringing bravado are heavily populated with romantic heroes, unreachable heroines, kings, queens, knights, and criminals in a whirlwind of adventure, espionage, conspiracy, murder, revenge, love, scandal and suspense. Dumas transforms smaller historical figures into larger than life characters: the Count of Artegnan, an impetuous young man in search of glory; the seductive evil seductress "Milady"; the mighty and devious Cardinal Richelieu; the weak king Louis XIII and his unhappy queen, and, of course, the three musketeers themselves, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, whose motto "all for one, one for all" has come to embody devout friendship. With a plot featuring stolen diamonds, masked balls, stolen letters, and of course, great sword fighting, The Three Musketeers is eternally entertaining.

Book Club Questions

About The Author of The Book Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas, père (French for "father", akin to Senior in English), born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a French writer, best known for his numerous historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world. Many of his novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne were serialized. Dumas also wrote plays and magazine articles and was a prolific correspondent.

Dumas was of Haitian descent and mixed-race. His father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) to Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and Marie-Cassette Dumas, a black slave. At age 14 Thomas-Alexandre was taken by his father to France, where he was educated in a military academy and entered the military for what became an illustrious career.

Dumas's father's aristocratic rank helped young Alexandre Dumas acquire work with Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, then as a writer, finding early success. He became one of the leading authors of the French Romantic Movement, in Paris.