What do you think?
Rate this book
The Three Musketeers: Iillustrated Young Readers' Edition
All For One, One For All! When daring young swordsman d’Artagnan travels to Paris seeking honor and fortune in the king’s Guard, he quickly befriends the famed three Musketeers—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Loyal servants to the crown, the four friends cross swords with street criminals, face the cardinal’s Guards—who seek to destroy them—in duels to the death, and save the honor of the queen by unraveling treasonous schemes in a race against time. It will take epic courage, chivalry, and skill to thwart the plots against them and achieve victory at last. Carefully adapted and abridged, this young reader’s edition of Alexandre Dumas’s classic swashbuckling tale of adventure, swordplay, and unbreakable friendship is enriched with brand-new, action-packed illustrations by renowned artist Brett Helquist.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published September 27, 2011
36 people are currently reading
99 people want to read
About the author
Alexandre Dumas
6,970 books12.4k followersThis note regards Alexandre Dumas, père, the father of Alexandre Dumas, fils (son). For the son, see Alexandre Dumas fils.
Alexandre Dumas père, born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a towering figure of 19th-century French literature whose historical novels and adventure tales earned global renown. Best known for The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and other swashbuckling epics, Dumas crafted stories filled with daring heroes, dramatic twists, and vivid historical backdrops. His works, often serialized and immensely popular with the public, helped shape the modern adventure genre and remain enduring staples of world literature.
Dumas was the son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a celebrated general in Revolutionary France and the highest-ranking man of African descent in a European army at the time. His father’s early death left the family in poverty, but Dumas’s upbringing was nonetheless marked by strong personal ambition and a deep admiration for his father’s achievements. He moved to Paris as a young man and began his literary career writing for the theatre, quickly rising to prominence in the Romantic movement with successful plays like Henri III et sa cour and Antony.
In the 1840s, Dumas turned increasingly toward prose fiction, particularly serialized novels, which reached vast audiences through French newspapers. His collaboration with Auguste Maquet, a skilled plotter and historian, proved fruitful. While Maquet drafted outlines and conducted research, Dumas infused the narratives with flair, dialogue, and color. The result was a string of literary triumphs, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, both published in 1844. These novels exemplified Dumas’s flair for suspenseful pacing, memorable characters, and grand themes of justice, loyalty, and revenge.
The D’Artagnan Romances—The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte of Bragelonne—cemented his fame. They follow the adventures of the titular Gascon hero and his comrades Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, blending historical fact and fiction into richly imagined narratives. The Count of Monte Cristo offered a darker, more introspective tale of betrayal and retribution, with intricate plotting and a deeply philosophical core.
Dumas was also active in journalism and theater. He founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris, which staged dramatizations of his own novels. A prolific and energetic writer, he is estimated to have written or co-written over 100,000 pages of fiction, plays, memoirs, travel books, and essays. He also had a strong interest in food and published a massive culinary encyclopedia, Le Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine, filled with recipes, anecdotes, and reflections on gastronomy.
Despite his enormous success, Dumas was frequently plagued by financial troubles. He led a lavish lifestyle, building the ornate Château de Monte-Cristo near Paris, employing large staffs, and supporting many friends and relatives. His generosity and appetite for life often outpaced his income, leading to mounting debts. Still, his creative drive rarely waned.
Dumas’s mixed-race background was a source of both pride and tension in his life. He was outspoken about his heritage and used his platform to address race and injustice. In his novel Georges, he explored issues of colonialism and identity through a Creole protagonist. Though he encountered racism, he refused to be silenced, famously replying to a racial insult by pointing to his ancestry and achievements with dignity and wit.
Later in life, Dumas continued writing and traveling, spending time in Belgium, Italy, and Russia. He supported nationalist causes, particularly Italian unification, and even founded a newspaper to advocate for Giuseppe Garibaldi. Though his popularity waned somewhat in his final years, his literary legacy grew steadily. He wrote in a style that was accessible, entertaining, and emotionally reso
Alexandre Dumas père, born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a towering figure of 19th-century French literature whose historical novels and adventure tales earned global renown. Best known for The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and other swashbuckling epics, Dumas crafted stories filled with daring heroes, dramatic twists, and vivid historical backdrops. His works, often serialized and immensely popular with the public, helped shape the modern adventure genre and remain enduring staples of world literature.
Dumas was the son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a celebrated general in Revolutionary France and the highest-ranking man of African descent in a European army at the time. His father’s early death left the family in poverty, but Dumas’s upbringing was nonetheless marked by strong personal ambition and a deep admiration for his father’s achievements. He moved to Paris as a young man and began his literary career writing for the theatre, quickly rising to prominence in the Romantic movement with successful plays like Henri III et sa cour and Antony.
In the 1840s, Dumas turned increasingly toward prose fiction, particularly serialized novels, which reached vast audiences through French newspapers. His collaboration with Auguste Maquet, a skilled plotter and historian, proved fruitful. While Maquet drafted outlines and conducted research, Dumas infused the narratives with flair, dialogue, and color. The result was a string of literary triumphs, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, both published in 1844. These novels exemplified Dumas’s flair for suspenseful pacing, memorable characters, and grand themes of justice, loyalty, and revenge.
The D’Artagnan Romances—The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte of Bragelonne—cemented his fame. They follow the adventures of the titular Gascon hero and his comrades Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, blending historical fact and fiction into richly imagined narratives. The Count of Monte Cristo offered a darker, more introspective tale of betrayal and retribution, with intricate plotting and a deeply philosophical core.
Dumas was also active in journalism and theater. He founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris, which staged dramatizations of his own novels. A prolific and energetic writer, he is estimated to have written or co-written over 100,000 pages of fiction, plays, memoirs, travel books, and essays. He also had a strong interest in food and published a massive culinary encyclopedia, Le Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine, filled with recipes, anecdotes, and reflections on gastronomy.
Despite his enormous success, Dumas was frequently plagued by financial troubles. He led a lavish lifestyle, building the ornate Château de Monte-Cristo near Paris, employing large staffs, and supporting many friends and relatives. His generosity and appetite for life often outpaced his income, leading to mounting debts. Still, his creative drive rarely waned.
Dumas’s mixed-race background was a source of both pride and tension in his life. He was outspoken about his heritage and used his platform to address race and injustice. In his novel Georges, he explored issues of colonialism and identity through a Creole protagonist. Though he encountered racism, he refused to be silenced, famously replying to a racial insult by pointing to his ancestry and achievements with dignity and wit.
Later in life, Dumas continued writing and traveling, spending time in Belgium, Italy, and Russia. He supported nationalist causes, particularly Italian unification, and even founded a newspaper to advocate for Giuseppe Garibaldi. Though his popularity waned somewhat in his final years, his literary legacy grew steadily. He wrote in a style that was accessible, entertaining, and emotionally reso
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 21, 2013
Man, what had gotten into me that made me give it two stars earlier? I feel really bad about it. I'm not crazy about this book, and I don't think I will read it again any time soon. However, compared to other books that I've rated two stars, The Three Musketeers is much superior. Duh!
Maybe I am just not into the whole idea about men fighting (to death!) for nothing. A little provocation here and they killed each other. Also, I'd understand if a group of trained men (and women) are to do anything they're capable of doing to protect and save their country, but if you add some king or queen into this scenario, well, let's just say that I am not amused. It's a personal thing. I just can't comprehend how someone can just be born in a certain family and boom! He/she becomes an heir to the throne. Why would anyone obey a person on that basis?
Ah, never mind. Like I said, it's a personal thing, so this book should be amazing for other people. Maybe I just picked it up because it was on sale and I felt a sort of obligation to read as many classic reads as I could. I don't know.
Maybe I am just not into the whole idea about men fighting (to death!) for nothing. A little provocation here and they killed each other. Also, I'd understand if a group of trained men (and women) are to do anything they're capable of doing to protect and save their country, but if you add some king or queen into this scenario, well, let's just say that I am not amused. It's a personal thing. I just can't comprehend how someone can just be born in a certain family and boom! He/she becomes an heir to the throne. Why would anyone obey a person on that basis?
Ah, never mind. Like I said, it's a personal thing, so this book should be amazing for other people. Maybe I just picked it up because it was on sale and I felt a sort of obligation to read as many classic reads as I could. I don't know.
April 30, 2021
I'm not sure who this translation/very-slight-abridgment is appropriäte for. My seven-year-old wanted to hear the book, but the language was at a very high level, which was fine—that just means the publisher and I were picturing different “Young Readers.” But compared to other translations, a lot of description has been taken out. This was my main problem with this translation/very slight abridgment: I always felt like I was a little removed from the action, or watching it in soft focus. Another way to describe it was that it was like reading a play and stage directions instead of a novel. I looked at some other translations (namely The Three Musketeers), and this dœsn’t appear to be Dumas’s fault. There are other seriöus abridgments out there, but I do not see the point in publishing a book that is 85-90% the length of the original, especially one that contains all the advanced language but none of the description that makes it interesting. There is obvöusly a meä culpa here: there are dozens versions of this at the library, some of which I even looked at while reading, and I just should have switched to a different one as soon as I realized the issue. (I was also a French major, so I don’t have a great excuse for having read this in English anyway!)
Due to the distancing effect described above, it was hard to get into the story, but I could tell it was an interesting and well-thought-out one. I imagine (with descriptions in place) it would even be exciting! In particular, the scene with the imprisonment of Milady and her escape kept my attention. It’s also, though, a good example of strange abridgment. The translator/abridger chose to keep the original five chapters where Milady slowly manipulates the guard—and this should be slow, lest Lord de Winter seem to be a fool—but if you’re going to have twenty pages just to show a master manipulator at work, make it 21-22 pages and give us some description of what’s happening!
Oh, and the ending with Milady was terrible. And that is Dumas’s fault!
I chose this one because I saw it had Helquist’s illustrations. I feel like this isn’t the first time I’ve been burned by assuming a prestigious illustrator meant a good translation/abridgment. I did like the illustrations!
I almost want to read another translation/non-abridgment, and I have started looking at one to compare, but as I’ve said, this edition is so close that it’s mostly, frustratingly redundant. Perhaps I’ll read a different edition of Twenty Years After (which, to be fair, dœs not exist by this translator/illustrator team)—Ellsworth has one, so that seems like the natural next step.
Due to the distancing effect described above, it was hard to get into the story, but I could tell it was an interesting and well-thought-out one. I imagine (with descriptions in place) it would even be exciting! In particular, the scene with the imprisonment of Milady and her escape kept my attention. It’s also, though, a good example of strange abridgment. The translator/abridger chose to keep the original five chapters where Milady slowly manipulates the guard—and this should be slow, lest Lord de Winter seem to be a fool—but if you’re going to have twenty pages just to show a master manipulator at work, make it 21-22 pages and give us some description of what’s happening!
Oh, and the ending with Milady was terrible. And that is Dumas’s fault!
I chose this one because I saw it had Helquist’s illustrations. I feel like this isn’t the first time I’ve been burned by assuming a prestigious illustrator meant a good translation/abridgment. I did like the illustrations!
I almost want to read another translation/non-abridgment, and I have started looking at one to compare, but as I’ve said, this edition is so close that it’s mostly, frustratingly redundant. Perhaps I’ll read a different edition of Twenty Years After (which, to be fair, dœs not exist by this translator/illustrator team)—Ellsworth has one, so that seems like the natural next step.
March 18, 2013
This is the second time I read The Three Musketeers, and although the edition I read this time is retold by Clarissa Hutton, I enjoyed it anyway. In fact, my second experience in reading The Three Musketeers is more enjoyable than the first one. It felt funnier in many parts and the story is more engaging. I guess the style of translation affects the sense of the story and the enjoyment in reading, for I first read it in a translated version into Indonesian language and this time I read it in English. I love The Three Musketeers as a work of historical fiction of 17th century France as well as an adventure and romance, and as a story of bravery, loyalty, and friendship. The version I read is a Young Readers’ Edition (of which I thought the vocabulary used is rather unfamiliar for a young reader) with illustrations by Brett Helquist (the illustrator of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events). The illustrations made this book even more collectible. And if you wonder if I would want to reread The Three Musketeers in the words of Alexandre Dumas himself, then my answer is yes.
@melmarian
Read my complete review here: http://surgabukuku.wordpress.com/2013...
@melmarian
Read my complete review here: http://surgabukuku.wordpress.com/2013...
January 5, 2012
This is a wonderful read, but nearly too mature for the incoming 6th graders. I will stress to whoever reads this ageless classic that there is mature content being served here and that you need to be ready for detailed violence, murder, defiance and retribution in the old English and French style then... do not checkout this famous and fanatical masterpiece.
The basic of this story is relatively well known: attractive and athletic, young D’Artagnan invites each of the Three Musketeers, who are noble, chivalries, and dreamy…Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. These men impressed by his bravery and quick-thinking become his mentor. Meanwhile, the Queen of France, engaged in an affair (on the page with many details) with the Duke of Buckingham. Of course the affair is detected and the four handsome heroes decide to support the Queen’s interests.
I would enjoy all the classics if they were this easy to understnd and the stories where this much FUN!
The basic of this story is relatively well known: attractive and athletic, young D’Artagnan invites each of the Three Musketeers, who are noble, chivalries, and dreamy…Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. These men impressed by his bravery and quick-thinking become his mentor. Meanwhile, the Queen of France, engaged in an affair (on the page with many details) with the Duke of Buckingham. Of course the affair is detected and the four handsome heroes decide to support the Queen’s interests.
I would enjoy all the classics if they were this easy to understnd and the stories where this much FUN!
May 11, 2014
Best book ever
I like it it was a good idea to bring into a book this is the best book ever :)
I like it it was a good idea to bring into a book this is the best book ever :)
June 24, 2019
The story was very confusing at times and even now that I'm finished I'm not sure I understand what went on, but I did love the characters and had an enjoyable time reading this book.
September 21, 2021
"Thank you . Be easy ." The Duke of Buckingham p.264
September 18, 2024
3.75 for the drama and tension consistent the whole way through. As well the ‘love triangles’ and the adventure of such contrasting characters.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews