Lawrence Ellsworth – författare

A new translation picking up twenty years after the conclusion of The Three Musketeers and continuing the adventures of the valiant d’Artagnan and his three loyal friends

The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas’s most famous and enduring novel, completed its serial publication in the summer of 1844, and by the time of its book publication at the end of that year, readers were already demanding a sequel. They got it starting in January 1845, when the first chapters of Twenty Years After began to appear―but it wasn’t quite what they were expecting.

When Twenty Years After opens it is 1648: the Red Sphinx, Cardinal Richelieu, is dead, France is ruled by a regency in the grip of civil war, and across the English Channel the monarchy of King Charles I hangs by a thread. As d’Artagnan will find, these are problems that can’t be solved with a sword thrust. In Twenty Years After, the musketeers confront maturity and face its greatest challenge: sometimes, you fail. It’s in how the four comrades respond to failure, and rise above it, that we begin to see the true characters of Dumas’s great heroes.

A true literary achievement, Twenty Years After is long overdue for a modern reassessment―and a new translation. As an added inducement, Lawrence Ellsworth has discovered a “lost” chapter that was overlooked in the novel’s original publication, and is included in none of the available English translations to date―until now.

Dumas’s rousing sequel to The Three Musketeers continues in Blood Royal, the second half of what Dumas originally published as Twenty Years After.

For the first time in English in over a century comes a new translation of the forgotten sequel to Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, continuing the dramatic tale of Cardinal Richelieu and his implacable enemies.

In 1844, Alexandre Dumas published The Three Musketeers, a novel so famous and still so popular today that it scarcely needs introduction. Shortly thereafter he wrote a sequel, Twenty Years After, that resumed the adventures of his swashbuckling heroes.

Later, toward the end of his career, Dumas wrote The Red Sphinx, another direct sequel to The Three Musketeers that begins not twenty years later but a mere twenty days afterward. The Red Sphinx picks up right where the The Three Musketeers left off, continuing the stories of Cardinal Richelieu, Queen Anne, and King Louis XIII―and introducing a charming new hero, the Comte de Moret, a real historical figure from the period. A young cavalier newly arrived in Paris, Moret is an illegitimate son of the former king and thus half-brother to King Louis. The French Court seethes with intrigue as king, queen, and cardinal all vie for power, and young Moret soon finds himself up to his handsome neck in conspiracy, danger―and passionate romance.

Dumas wrote seventy-five chapters of The Red Sphinx for serial publication but never finished it, and so the novel languished for almost a century before its first book publication in France in 1946. While Dumas never completed the book, he had earlier written a separate novella, The Dove, that recounted the final adventures of Moret and Cardinal Richelieu.

Now for the first time, in one cohesive narrative, The Red Sphinx and The Dove make a complete and satisfying story line―a rip-roaring novel of historical adventure, heretofore unknown to English-language readers, by the great Alexandre Dumas, king of the swashbucklers.

For years d’Artagnan shared his adventures with his three comrades—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—but now, in Between Two Kings, the First Musketeer returns to the forefront. This is truly d’Artagnan’s novel, bringing to a dramatic climax the story that began when he first arrived in Paris thirty years earlier in The Three Musketeers.

This brand-new translation of Between Two Kings immediately picks up the story and themes of Blood Royal, where d’Artagnan tries to thwart destiny by saving England’s Charles I; now, he will be instrumental in the restoration of his son, Charles II, the first of the two kings of the title. Disappointed in the irresolution of young Louis XIV, d’Artagnan takes a leave of absence from the King’s Musketeers and ventures to England with a bold plan to hoist Charles II onto his throne, a swashbuckling escapade in which he is unwittingly assisted by his old comrade Athos. D’Artagnan returns triumphant to France, where he is recalled to service by the second king, Louis XIV, who is now finally ready to take full advantage of the extraordinary talents of his officer of musketeers.

This newly translated volume by Lawrence Ellsworth is the first volume of Alexandre Dumas’s mega-novel Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, the epic finale to the Musketeers Cycle, which will end with the justly famous The Man in the Iron Mask. This marks the first significant new English translation of this series of novels in over a century.

The latest entry in this acclaimed series of new translations of the Musketeer novels, Blood Royal continues the adventures of the valiant d’Artagnan and his three loyal friends.

The latest translation in Lawrence Ellsworth’s acclaimed new series of Alexandre Dumas’s greatest adventures is Blood Royal, the second half of what Dumas originally published as Twenty Years After. In this volume all the plots and schemes set up in the previous novel come to dramatic fruition in the kind of exciting thrill-ride Dumas is famous for—while at the same time introducing the characters and themes that form the foundation of the rest of the series, leading to its great climax in The Man in the Iron Mask.

In Blood Royal, the Four Musketeers all venture to England on parallel missions to save King Charles I, pursued by the murderous and vengeful Mordaunt, the son of Milady de Winter, the great villain of The Three Musketeers. Despite all his experience, d’Artagnan is repeatedly foiled by the much-younger Mordaunt, who erupts out of the past to embody the strengths of audacity and cunning that were once d’Artagnan’s hallmarks. Mordaunt has corrupted those youthful strengths, and the older d’Artagnan is no match for him until he is able to pull his former team together again. To do this d’Artagnan will have to become a true leader of men, leading not just by example but also by foresight, persuasion, and compromise. Only then can the team of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis be re-formed in all its might to defeat the specter of their past.

Blood Royal is unmatched in Dumas’s oeuvre in its depictions of his most famous and beloved characters, and an unforgettable saga of swordplay, suspense, revenge, and ultimate triumph.