Historical Fiction Dumas, Alexandre: Marie Antoinette Romances v1 30 Aug 2009

[waller4343]

First, I have to say - Holy (please insert your favorite - non gender or bodily function specific - Robin-esque exclamation of awe) Batman! How do you people do this thousands of time? I'm exhausted and I'm not too sure of my sanity at the moment. I have been appreciative of all the books, notes and help I have received just bouncing around in the forum. Now I just figure you people are ultra-human and bow to the four winds in wonder.

Second - a special thanks to HarryT and Patricia. I have taken their books, I'm pretty confident that if they put the effort into them then I will also enjoy them, and I have used their Book Designer Guides and Hints and Tips. This is the result.

A word of caution: if you get agitated or ill by reading books with errors in punctuation, formatting or spelling you might want to wait for a couple more versions before reading this. I have done the best I could, and made many, many corrections, but I am sure I missed almost as many errors as I caught. And since I don't speak or read French I may have several names for the same character. There are also 2 or 3 sections (about 2 paragraphs each) in the 5 books that I can't find anywhere. I have them marked with ***

The Marie Antoinette Romances are a series of books by Dumas about the events leading up to the "Reign of Terror" in the last quarter of the 18th century. I was surprised to not see it here since it is one of my favorite Dumas stories. Like most of his stories the publication is all messed up - there are as many versions as there are publishers of his works.

There isn't as much action in these books, I prefer the D'Artangnan stories when I'm in the mood for sword fights and heroics. There isn't a hero in the entire series. But the characterizations of Dumas' people is Dumas and his finest, even if they are a bit slanted toward negative values. The villains don't think they are villains, they just think they are righting wrongs and should be considered heroes, or at least understood by their peers. Pretty much his most human characters.

Memoirs of a Physician - This is the first "book" in the series. I have combined3 versions that I have found in various places to get as complete a version as I can. In fact I found part of the book that I have never read before that clears up a lot questions I had about comments made later in the series. In this boo you have masonic rituals, telepathy, alchemy, intrigues, plots, and lots of fun. This has been published as Joseph Balsamo (sometimes as the first volume, sometimes as the second) with Memoirs of a Physician. It has also been published in 1, 2 and three volumes.

The Queen's Necklace - This story takes place several years after King Louis XV has died. King Louis XVI is shown as weak and jealous, Queen Marie is sweet, naive and just a bit too trusting. But the intrigues are detailed, the incidents are believable and you still have Joseph Balsamo working for the freedom of the French people. I was especially impressed with how Dumas portrayed Jeanne de Valois, another innocent who is just trying to protect herself and begins the decline of the monarchy.

Ange Pitou - This is Dumas' version of the events leading up to the taking of the Bastille. It shows the danger of "just following along". The fine Dumas characterizations of the leaders of the revolution are hardly complimentary.

La Comtesse de Charny - In this section you get some very detailed behind the scenes looks at both the revolutionists and the royals. All of my favorite villains are back, as well as some "heroes" from the first book. I can't say how factual the story is, Dumas has never been known for his fact finding skills, but if feels like it could have happened this way to me.

The Chevalier de Maison-Rouge - This story was actually written first. It was one of Alexandre Dumas' early plays, then it was serialized in the papers. So I guess that the rest of the Romances are prequels to this story. But Dumas got lost along the way and none of the characters I like (excepting the historical ones) show up here. It is based on the legend of an attempt to save Ex-Queen Marie Antoinette. It seems that Dumas heard about a communication to the queen via a carnation and he built this entire story around it.

I am only able to preview the .prc version of this book so I'm not sure about the usability of the other versions I have uploaded. But I did use BD for the .lrf and .prc versions and Calibre for the .epub and .lit version, so I am hoping that they work. I tried the .imp but the resulting file was over 52 megs. If anyone has an interest in them separately I still have the individual files.

Here's hoping you will enjoy them.

Dan

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[HarryT]

Thank you for posting this.

You will find page scans of all these books at www.archive.org - that's the best way to correct illegible sections.

The formatting of these needs MAJOR work, as you rightly say. One thing which badly needs doing is to make the table of contents of each book into hyperlinks.

Please don't take this as criticism - these is an extremely useful upload, but it could be made a lot better with a little work.

[waller4343]

Thanks Harry, and I don't mind criticism as long as it's constructive. I did have the TOC working, but in my final (?) formatting I must have broke them. So it's back to work. I have looked at the internet archives, but the missing pieces are from the expanded editions that I can't find using any searches I can think of. I keep coming up with the edited for content Collier & Son's versions. I am still looking though.

And I like your use of the the term "a little work". I've already lost 5 weekends with the work I have put into it - and I see many more lost weekends ahead. But it's sorta fun and I learn something new with each attempt.

So I appreciate your comments in the spirit they are given.

Dan

[HarryT]

Don't get me wrong - it would take me six months to create a fully-proofed version of that book. But there are a number of improvements (such as the TOC) that could be made with relatively little effort.

What did you use for the LRF version, by the way? It is slightly odd - for one thing the text is left justified (which I've never seen before in an LRF file!) and the text size is (for me, anyway) too large.

[waller4343]

For the LRF I used the default settings of BD. The other 3 formats were converted by Calibre.