The word 'swashbuckling' is often used to describe the novels of Alexandre Dumas the Elder, the creator of D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers, the Count of Monte Cristo and the Man in the Iron Mask. But Dumas himself led a life as colourful as many of his gallery of rogues, villains and heroes. Having grown up in poverty, he found employment in the household of a future king of France. He was prolific on the page and pretty active away from it. At first with a series of highly successful plays and then with serialised novels, his production house churned out hundreds of thousands of pages of gripping narrative. He had pet projects like building a mansion and theatre, he had countless mistresses and he frequently found himself in legal disputes and on the run from debt collectors.

In the 150th anniversary year of Dumas’ death Rajan Datar explores the writer's life and work with Claudie Bernard, professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University; Daniel Desormeaux, professor of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; Sylvain Ledda, professor of 19th Century Literature at Rouen University in France; and Anne O'Neil-Henry, associate professor of French and Francophone Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

[Image: Alexandre Dumas the Elder. Credit: The Print Collector/Getty Images]