Alexander Dumas was born in 1802 at Villes-Cotterets. He received very little education but when he entered the household of the future king, Louis-Philippe, he began to read veraciously and then to write. In 1839 he began writing novels dealing with the wars of religion and the Revolution, but he is most remembered for his historical novels, 'The Count of Monte Cristo' and 'The Three Musketeers'.
Richard Pevear, with his wife, Larissa Volokhonsky, has translated Tolstoy's Anna Karenina as well as the work of Bulgakov, Dostoevsky, Gogol and Chekhov. He has also translated from the French, Italian, and Greek. Originally from Boston, he now lives in Paris, where he teaches at the American University of Paris.