Brown grained cloth with gilt lettering on the spine. Embossed ship on front cover.

The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel written by French author Alexandre Dumas (père) completed in 1844. It is one of the author’s more popular works, along with The Three Musketeers. Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet.

The story takes place in France, Italy, and islands in the Mediterranean during the historical events of 1815–1839: the era of the Bourbon Restoration through the reign of Louis-Philippe of France. It begins on the day that Napoleon left his first island of exile, Elba, beginning the Hundred Days period when Napoleon returned to power. The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book, an adventure story centrally concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy, and forgiveness. It centres on a man who is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes from jail, acquires a fortune, and sets about exacting revenge on those responsible for his imprisonment.

Before he can marry his fiancée Mercédès, Edmond Dantès, a nineteen-year-old Frenchman, and first mate of the Pharaon, is falsely accused of treason, arrested, and imprisoned without trial in the Château d’If, a grim island fortress off Marseille. A fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria, correctly deduces that his jealous rival Fernand Mondego, envious crewmate Danglars, and double-dealing magistrate De Villefort turned him in. Faria inspires his escape and guides him to a fortune in treasure. As the powerful and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo (Italy), he arrives from the Orient to enter the fashionable Parisian world of the 1830s and avenge himself on the men who conspired to destroy him.

The book is considered a literary classic today. According to Lucy Sante, “The Count of Monte Cristo has become a fixture of Western civilization’s literature, as inescapable and immediately identifiable as Mickey Mouse, and the story of Little Red Riding Hood.”

THE PLOT

On the day in 1815 when Napoleon escapes the Island of Elba, Edmond Dantès brings the ship Pharaon into dock at Marseille. His captain, Leclère, died on the passage; the ship’s owner, Morrel, will make Dantès the next captain. On his deathbed, Leclère charged Dantès to deliver a package to General Bertrand (exiled with Napoleon), and a letter from Elba to an unknown man in Paris. Dantès’ colleague Danglars is jealous of Dantès’ rapid promotion and, as the two men are at odds, fearful for his own employment should Dantès ascend. On the eve of Dantès’ wedding to his Catalan fiancée Mercédès, Danglars meets at a cabaret with Fernand Mondego, Mercédès’ cousin and a rival for her affections, and the two hatch a plot to anonymously denounce Dantès, accusing him of being a Bonapartist traitor. Danglars and Mondego set a trap for Dantès’. Dantès’ neighbour, Caderousse, is present at the meeting; he too is jealous of Dantès, although he objects to the plot, but becomes too intoxicated with wine to prevent it. The following day at the wedding breakfast, Dantès is arrested, and the cowardly Caderousse stays silent, fearing being also accused of Bonapartism. Villefort, the deputy crown prosecutor in Marseille, destroys the letter from Elba when he discovers that it is addressed to his own father, Noirtier, a Bonapartist, knowing it would destroy his own political career. To silence Dantès, he condemns him without trial to life imprisonment and resists all appeals by Morrel to release him, during the Hundred Days and once the king is restored to rule France.

After six years of solitary imprisonment in the Château d’If, Dantès is on the verge of suicide when he meets the Abbé Faria (“The Mad Priest”), an Italian prisoner who had dug an escape tunnel that exited in Dantès’ cell. Over the next eight years, Faria educates Dantès in languages, culture, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, and science. Knowing himself to be close to death from catalepsy, Faria tells Dantès the location of a treasure on the island of Monte Cristo, an inheritance from his work for the last of the Spada family. When Faria dies, Dantès takes his place in the burial sack, with a knife that Faria made. When he is thrown into the sea, Dantès cuts through the sack and swims to a nearby island, where he is rescued by a smuggling ship that passes Monte Cristo. He disembarks, pretending he is going to hunt goats. To stay on the island (to find his treasure, not yet found), Dantès pretends he has broken ribs. Six days later, the ship returns and he boards, carrying a few carefully hidden diamonds.

In port, Dantès trades the diamonds for a yacht, returns to Monte Cristo for the rest of the treasure, and returns to Marseille. He later purchases the island of Monte Cristo and the title of Count from the Tuscan government.

Traveling as the Abbé Busoni, Dantès meets Caderousse, now married and living in poverty, who regrets not intervening in Dantès’ arrest. Caderousse names Danglars and Mondego as the men who betrayed him, and also that his father has died of self-inflicted starvation and Mercédès has married. Dantès gives Caderousse a diamond that can be either a chance to redeem himself or a trap that will lead to his ruin.

Learning that his old employer Morrel faces bankruptcy, Dantès, posing as a clerk of Thompson and French, buys Morrel’s debts and gives Morrel three months to fulfil his obligations. At the end of the three months and with no way to repay his debts, Morrel is about to commit suicide when he learns that his debts have been mysteriously paid and that one of his lost ships has returned with a full cargo, secretly rebuilt and laden by Dantès.

After travelling in the East to continue his education (and to plot his revenge), Dantès reappears nine years later as the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. His three targets are Mondego (now Count de Morcerf and husband of Mercédès); Danglars (now a baron and a banker); and Villefort (now procureur du roi, or prosecutor for the king).

In Rome, at Carnival time, Dantès arranges for Viscount Albert de Morcerf, the son of Mercédès and Mondego, to be captured by the bandit Luigi Vampa. Dantès “rescues” the boy, who shows his gratitude by agreeing to introduce the Count into Parisian society. In Paris, Dantès dazzles Danglars with his wealth, persuading him to extend him a credit of six million francs. By manipulating the bond market, Dantès then quickly destroys a large portion of Danglars’ fortune. The rest of it rapidly disappears through mysterious bankruptcies, suspensions of payment, and more bad luck in the Stock Exchange.

Dantès’s servant Bertuccio had an older brother who was killed for being a Bonapartist in Nîmes where Villefort rules; Bertuccio declares a vendetta on him. He tracks Villefort to Auteuil, finding him on the day when Madame Danglars, then a widow, delivered their child in the house that the Count has now purchased from the father-in-law of Villefort. To cover up the affair, Villefort told Madame Danglars that the infant was stillborn, smothered the child and buried him in the garden. Bertuccio stabs Villefort after this burial. Bertuccio unearths the child and resuscitates him. Bertuccio’s sister-in-law brought the child up, giving him the name “Benedetto”, her blessing. Benedetto takes up a life of crime by age 11. He robs his adoptive mother (Bertuccio’s sister-in-law) and kills her, then runs away. His older brother and sister-in-law now dead, Bertuccio has no family in Corsica, so he takes Abbé Busoni’s advice to work for the Count.

Benedetto is sentenced to the galleys with Caderousse, who sold the diamond, but then killed both his wife and the buyer out of greed. After Benedetto and Caderousse are freed by Dantès, using the alias “Lord Wilmore,” the Count induces Benedetto to take the identity of “Viscount Andrea Cavalcanti” and introduces him into Parisian society. Andrea ingratiates himself to Danglars, who betroths his daughter Eugénie to Andrea, not knowing they are half-siblings, after cancelling her engagement to Albert. Meanwhile, Caderousse blackmails Andrea, threatening to reveal his past if he does not share his new-found wealth. Cornered by “Abbé Busoni” while attempting to rob the Count’s house, Caderousse begs to be given another chance. Dantès forces him to write a letter to Danglars exposing Cavalcanti as an impostor and allows Caderousse to leave the house. The moment Caderousse leaves the estate, he is stabbed by Andrea. Caderousse dictates a deathbed statement identifying his killer, and the Count reveals his true identity to Caderousse moments before he dies.

Wanting information on how Albert’s father made his fortune in Greece years earlier, Danglars researches the events, and the information is published in a French newspaper while Albert and the Count are in Normandy. Albert’s friend Beauchamps sends the news article to Albert who returns to Paris. His father has been tried in a court of the French aristocrats and is found guilty based on the testimony of Haydée, who reads the newspapers. Years before, Fernand had betrayed Ali Pasha of Janina to the Turks. After Ali’s death, Fernand sold Ali’s wife Vasiliki and his 4-year-old daughter Haydée into slavery, thus earning his fortune. While Vasiliki died shortly thereafter, Dantès purchased Haydée seven years later when she was 11 years old. Fernand has a defence against the newspaper’s story but no defence against Haydée’s testimony. He rides away from the court in his disgrace. Albert blames the Count for his father’s downfall, as Danglars says that the Count encouraged him to do the research on the father of the man engaged to his daughter. Albert challenges him to a duel. Mercédès, having already recognized Monte Cristo as Dantès, goes to the Count, now in Paris, and begs him to spare her son. During this interview, she learns the truth of arrest and imprisonment of Dantès but still convinces the Count not to kill her son. Realizing that Edmond Dantès now intends to let Albert kill him, she reveals the truth to Albert, which causes Albert to make a public apology to the Count. Albert and Mercédès disown Fernand and leave his house. Fernand then confronts the Count of Monte Cristo, who reveals his identity as Edmond Dantès; returning home in time to see his wife and son leave, Fernand shoots himself. Albert and Mercédès renounce their titles and wealth and depart to begin new lives, starting in Marseilles, at the house where Dantès and his father once lived. Dantès told them of the 3,000 francs he had buried there, to start life once he married, before all his misfortunes. Albert enlists as a soldier.

Valentine, Villefort’s daughter by his first wife, stands to inherit the fortune of her grandfather Noirtier and of her mother’s parents, the Saint-Mérans, while Villefort’s second wife Héloïse seeks the fortune for her son Édouard. The Count is aware of Héloïse’s intentions and introduces her to the techniques of poison. Héloïse fatally poisons the Saint-Mérans, so that Valentine inherits their fortune. Valentine is briefly disinherited by Noirtier in an attempt to prevent Valentine’s impending marriage with Franz d’Épinay, whom she does not love; however, the marriage is cancelled when d’Épinay learns from Noirtier that his father, whom he believed was assassinated by Bonapartists, was killed by Noirtier in a fair duel. After a failed attempt on Noirtier’s life, which leaves Noirtier’s servant Barrois dead, Héloïse targets Valentine so that Édouard, his other grandchild, will get the fortune. However, Valentine is the prime suspect in her father’s eyes in the deaths of the Saint-Mérans and Barrois. On learning that Morrel’s son Maximilien is in love with Valentine, the Count saves her by making it appear as though Héloïse’s plan to poison Valentine has succeeded and that Valentine is dead. Villefort learns from Noirtier that Héloïse is the real murderer and confronts her, giving her the choice of a public execution or committing suicide.

Fleeing after Caderousse’s letter exposes him and frees Danglars’ daughter from any marriage, Andrea is arrested and returned to Paris. Eugènie Danglars flees as well with her girlfriend. Villefort prosecutes Andrea. Bertuccio visits Andrea who is in prison awaiting trial, to tell him the truth about his father. At his trial, Andrea reveals that he is Villefort’s son and was rescued after Villefort buried him alive. Villefort admits his guilt and flees the court. He rushes home to stop his wife’s suicide but is too late; she has poisoned her son as well. The Count confronts Villefort, revealing his true identity as Dantès, which drives Villefort insane. Dantès tries but fails to resuscitate Édouard, causing him to question if he has gone too far.

After the Count’s manipulation of the bond market, Danglars is left with a destroyed reputation and 5,000,000 francs he has been holding in deposit for hospitals. The Count demands this sum to fulfil their credit agreement, and Danglars embezzles the hospital fund. He abandoned his wife, whom he blames for his losses in stock investments. She is abandoned by her partner in investing, whom she hoped to marry. Danglars flees to Italy with the Count’s receipt for the cash he requested from the banker Danglars, and 50,000 francs. While leaving Rome, he is kidnapped by the Count’s agent Luigi Vampa and is imprisoned. Forced to pay exorbitant prices for food and nearly starved to death, Danglars signs away his ill-gotten gains. Dantès anonymously returns the money to the hospitals, as Danglars had given their cash to the Count. Danglars finally repents his crimes, and a softened Dantès forgives him and allows him to leave with his freedom and 50,000 francs.

Maximilien Morrel, believing Valentine to be dead, contemplates suicide after her funeral. Dantès reveals his true identity and explains that he rescued Morrel’s father from bankruptcy years earlier; he then tells Maximilien to reconsider his suicide, and Maximilien is saved.

On the island of Monte Cristo, Dantès presents Valentine to Maximilien and reveals the true sequence of events. Having found peace in reviewing his vengeance and deciding he cannot play God, Dantès leaves the newly reunited couple part of his fortune on the island and departs for the East to find comfort and begin a new life with Haydée, who has declared her love for him. The reader is left with a final thought: “l’humaine sagesse était tout entière dans ces deux mots: attendre et espérer!” (“all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope'”).

 Alexandre Dumas (born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas père (where père is French for ‘father’, to distinguish him from his son Alexandre Dumas fils), was a French writer. His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors. Many of his historical novels of high adventure were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. His novels have been adapted since the early twentieth century into nearly 200 films.

Prolific in several genres, Dumas began his career by writing plays, which were successfully produced from the first. He also wrote numerous magazine articles and travel books; his published works totalled 100,000 pages. In the 1840s, Dumas founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris.

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-Cessette Dumas, an African 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 acquire work with Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, then as a writer, a career which led to early success. Decades later, after the election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1851, Dumas fell from favour and left France for Belgium, where he stayed for several years, then moved to Russia for a few years before going to Italy. In 1861, he founded and published the newspaper L’Indépendent, which supported Italian unification, before returning to Paris in 1864.

Though married, in the tradition of Frenchmen of higher social class, Dumas had numerous affairs (allegedly as many as 40). He was known to have had at least four illegitimate children, although twentieth-century scholars believe it was seven. He acknowledged and assisted his son, Alexandre Dumas, to become a successful novelist and playwright. They are known as Alexandre Dumas père (‘father’) and Alexandre Dumas fils (‘son’). Among his affairs, in 1866, Dumas had one with Adah Isaacs Menken, an American actress then less than half his age and at the height of her career.

The English playwright Watts Phillips, who knew Dumas in his later life, described him as “the most generous, large-hearted being in the world. He also was the most delightfully amusing and egotistical creature on the face of the earth. His tongue was like a windmill – once set in motion, you never knew when he would stop, especially if the theme was himself.”