Auguste Maquet

Life

Auguste Maquet was born in Paris in 1813, the son of a manufacturer. He was a strong student at the Lycée Charlemagne and briefly taught history there before leaving to write. In the 1830s he belonged to the circle of young Romantic writers around Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, publishing poetry and short fiction under a pseudonym without much success.

His career changed in 1838 when Nerval introduced him to Alexandre Dumas. Maquet had written a play that no theater would take; Dumas revised it and had it staged. From there the two men developed a working partnership that lasted into the 1850s. Maquet drafted plots and chapters from his historical research, and Dumas rewrote and expanded them into the finished serials. The novels published during these years under Dumas’s name, including The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne, were produced this way.

The partnership ended in dispute. Maquet sued in 1858 to be recognized as co-author and to recover money he was owed. The court ruled that Dumas owned the works, though it awarded Maquet payment. Maquet went on to write plays and novels on his own, served as president of the Société des gens de lettres, the French writers’ society, and died at his château at Sainte-Mesme in 1888, considerably better off than his former partner.

Literary significance

Maquet’s reputation rests entirely on the collaboration, and on the long argument about what he contributed to it. His own novels did not last. The historical research and structural planning he supplied to Dumas were real and substantial; the draft of the opening of The Three Musketeers in his hand survives, and comparing it with the published text has been a standard exercise for scholars interested in how the books were made. The usual verdict is that Maquet built the frames and Dumas gave them life, but the frames mattered.

Project Gutenberg and other modern catalogs now list Maquet as co-author of the novels he worked on, which is why he appears in this library alongside Dumas.

Where to start

Read Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, both in this library, are the two books on which Maquet’s claim to a share of authorship chiefly rests.