The Last Cavalier

by Alexandre Dumas, Lauren Yoder (Translator)

Overview

Selected as a Top Ten Book of the Year by The Washington Post: the newly discovered last novel by the author of The Three Musketeers.

Rousing, big, spirited, its action sweeping across oceans and continents, its hero gloriously indomitable, the last novel of Alexandre Dumas—lost for 125 years in the archives of the National Library in Paris—completes the oeuvre that Dumas imagined at the outset of his literary career.

Indeed, the story of France from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, as Dumas vibrantly retold it in his numerous enormously popular novels, has long been absent one vital, richly historical era: the Age of Napoleon. But no longer. Now, dynamically, in a tale of family honor and undying vengeance, of high adventure and heroic derring-do, The Last Cavalier fills that gap.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605980003
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	10/07/2008
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	864
Sales rank:	356,840
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Lauren Yoder is Professor of French at Davidson College in North Carolina. As a child, he devoured he novels of Alexandre Dumas. Lauren holds a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa.

Editorial Reviews

Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine appeared in France in 2005 and is now brought out in an excellent English translation by Lauren Yoder as The Last Cavalier. It's absolutely wonderful…As is fairly evident, Dumas intended Hector to be our viewpoint figure at many of the major theaters of war during the Napoleonic era. In this respect, he is a Gallic equivalent to Sharpe, the English soldier in Bernard Cornwell's admired modern novels about this same period. Though The Last Cavalier may be corny at times and is obviously padded in places…such flaws hardly matter: These 800 pages almost turn themselves. Alexandre Dumas remains, now as ever, the Napoleon of storytellers.
—The Washington Post

Michael Dirda

This first English translation of the last, previously unknown novel by Dumas (1802-1870) offers a stunning completion to his fictional mapping of French history. The plot centers on Compte Hector de Sainte Hermine, a royalist captured and imprisoned by Bonaparte. Part one finds him caught in the political intrigue of 1801-1804, as Napoleon moves from first consul to emperor. In part two, Hector, now known as René, is released from jail; he signs onto a French corsair as a common seaman, but his noble birth, superb education and martial abilities soon elevate him in rank. The next 300 pages slosh with swashbuckling sea adventure, casting heroic romance against the background of Napoleon's ultimate fall. It's Dumas at his best, but alloyed: asides; minibiographies; commentaries on fashion, manners, geography and history; and flashbacks pile up unendingly, leavened with farcical humor and witty punditry. Although it lacks the polish of The Three Musketeersand the concision of The Count of Monte Cristo, this capacious, rambling, unfinished account of the Napoleonic era represents vintage Dumas and an intensely personal vision of the time. (Nov.)

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Publishers Weekly

Dumas's final novel, discovered by scholar Claude Schopp around 1990, was originally published in installments from January to November 1869 in Le Moniteur Universel. Set in the Age of Napoleon, the novel is historically situated between The Companions of Jehu (which actually begins the story of The Last Cavalier's protagonist) and The Count of Monte Cristo. Its protagonist is Hector, the young Comte de Sainte-Hermine, who must abandon the woman he loves to avenge the deaths of his father and older brothers for the Royalist cause. Following Hector from France to Burma, the story is vintage Dumas. Though it is incomplete (the scene in progress is completed by Schopp), there is enough adventure and intrigue to satisfy the most demanding reader. In addition, this translation includes an informative essay by Schopp on the history and discovery of the lost novel as well as an appendix containing the first three chapters of another episode. A best seller in France upon its publication in 2005, this book is appropriate for all fiction collections.
—Karen Walton Morse

Library Journal

A hit from the vaults: Dumas pere's final work, reconstructed from 140-year-old newspapers. Dumas is renowned, of course, for swashbuckling tales such as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, studded with cliffhangers and moral lessons lightly delivered. This title is of a piece, the wrinkle being that Dumas wrote it, a la Dickens, as a newspaper serial and was far from finishing the story when he died. Dumas scholar Claude Schopp, whose literary detective work is responsible for this book, published in France in 2005, hazards missing links and provides the closing chapters, working from Dumas's notes; it's a neat bit of literary sleight-of-hand. While telling a grand tale of adventure, Dumas reminds his readers that the glorious France of the Napoleonic era had plenty of inglorious moments. His Napoleon is smart and power-hungry, as he announces in the opening sentence: "Now that we are in the Tuileries . . . we must try to stay." Easier said than done, for Napoleon is surrounded by enemies, mostly of the scheming-politician variety, and distracted from his duties by his wife's lavish spending; there are wars to fight, too, and much else to be done. Enter the noble Saint-Hermine, stripped of his title, who, chapter by chapter, hacks his way across land and sea to redeem himself at places such as Trafalgar, where Dumas movingly depicts the death of Lord Nelson and breaks the fourth wall in the bargain ("It seems to me that one of the greatest warriors the world has ever known should be accompanied all the way to death's door, if not by a historian, at least by a novelist"). Hermine has his enemies, too, and even a few friends, and sometimes both at once, among them the onlyman whom Napoleon fears-ah, and therein hangs a tale. A big book, and a pleasure for anyone who thrills at the likes of D'Artagnan and company.

Kirkus Reviews