1001 Stories For The Road

• THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (CHAP 30) THE FIFTH OF SEPTEMBER

  Reception and legacy The original work was published in serial form in the Journal des Débats in 1844. Carlos Javier Villafane Mercado described the effect in Europe: The effect of the serials, which held vast audiences enthralled ... is unlike any experience of reading we are likely to have known ourselves, maybe something like that of a particularly gripping television series. Day after day, at breakfast or at work or on the street, people talked of little else.   . The Montecristo Cuban cigar brand is allegedly named after the fondness of cigar rollers for listening to the novel read by a lector during their work. George Saintsbury stated that "Monte Cristo is said to have been at its first appearance, and for some time subsequently, the most popular book in Europe. Perhaps no novel within a given number of years had so many readers and penetrated into so many different countries."[19] This popularity has extended into modern times as well. The book was "translated into virtually all modern languages and has never been out of print in most of them. There have been at least twenty-nine motion pictures based on it ... as well as several television series, and many movies [have] worked the name 'Monte Cristo' into their titles."[  The title Monte Cristo lives on in a "famous gold mine, a line of luxury Cuban cigars, a sandwich, and any number of bars and casinos—it even lurks in the name of the street-corner hustle three-card monte."  Modern Russian writer and philologist Vadim Nikolayev determined The Count of Monte-Cristo as a megapolyphonic novel  The novel has been the inspiration for many other books, from Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur (1880),[22] then to a science fiction retelling in Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination,[23] and to Stephen Fry's The Stars' Tennis Balls (entitled Revenge in the U.S.)  Fantasy novelist Steven Brust's Khaavren Romances series have all used Dumas novels (particularly the Three Musketeers series) as their chief inspiration, recasting the plots of those novels to fit within Brust's established world of Dragaera  His 2020 novel The Baron of Magister Valley follows suit, using The Count of Monte Cristo as a starting point ] Jin Yong has admitted some influence from Dumas, his favorite non-Chinese novelist.[28] Some commentators feel that the plot of A Deadly Secret resembles The Count of Monte Cristo, except that they are based in different countries and historical periods.

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• THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (CHAP 28) THE PRISON REGISTER

  Background to elements of the plot A short novel titled Georges by Dumas was published in 1843, before The Count of Monte Cristo was written. This novel is of particular interest to scholars because Dumas reused many of the ideas and plot devices in The Count of Monte Cristo.[5] Dumas wrote that the germ of the idea of revenge as one theme in his novel The Count of Monte Cristo came from an anecdote (Le Diamant et la Vengeance[6]) published in a memoir of incidents in France in 1838, written by an archivist of the Paris police.[7][8] The archivist was Jacques Peuchet, and the multi-volume book was called Memoirs from the Archives of the Paris Police in English.[9] Dumas included this essay in one of the editions of his novel published in 1846.[10] Peuchet related the tale of a shoemaker, Pierre Picaud, living in Nîmes in 1807, who was engaged to marry a rich woman when three jealous friends falsely accused him of being a spy on behalf of England in a period of wars between France and England. Picaud was placed under a form of house arrest in the Fenestrelle Fort, where he served as a servant to a rich Italian cleric. When the cleric died, he left his fortune to Picaud, whom he had begun to treat as a son. Picaud then spent years plotting his revenge on the three men who were responsible for his misfortune. He stabbed the first with a dagger on which the words "Number One" were printed, and then he poisoned the second. The third man's son he lured into crime and his daughter into prostitution, finally stabbing the man himself. This third man, named Loupian, had married Picaud's fiancée while Picaud was under arrest.[6] In another of the true stories reported by Ashton-Wolfe, Peuchet describes a poisoning in a family.[10] This story is also mentioned in the Pléiade edition of this novel,[8] and it probably served as a model for the chapter of the murders inside the Villefort family. The introduction to the Pléiade edition mentions other sources from real life: a man named Abbé Faria existed, was imprisoned but did not die in prison; he died in 1819 and left no large legacy to anyone.[8] As for Dantès, his fate is quite different from his model in Peuchet's book, since that model is murdered by the "Caderousse" of the plot.

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• THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (CHAP29) THE HOUSE OF MORRELL & SON

  An Englishman from a firm to which Morell owes money stops by for a long talk with Morrell...who is awaiting news of his ship.

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• THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (CHAP 27) THE STORY

  The innkeeper takes time to give the traveller answers regarding persons of the past whom he knew well....

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• THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (CHAP 26) THE PONT DU GARD INN

  A solitary priest approaches a small empty tavern near the banks of a river and inquires of the owner, who name we know.   Our website: www.bestof1001stories.com

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