Baron Franz d’Épinay: A friend of Albert de Morcerf, (1830s) engaged to Valentine de Villefort. Originally, Dumas wrote part of the story, including the events in Rome and the return of Albert de Morcerf and Franz d’Épinay to Paris, in the first person from Franz d’Épinay’s point of view.
Lucien Debray: Secretary to the Minister of the Interior, a friend of Albert de Morcerf, and a lover of Madame Danglars, whom he provides with inside investment information, which she then passes on to her husband.
Beauchamp: Journalist and Chief Editor of l’Impartial, and friend of Albert de Morcerf.
Raoul, Baron de Château-Renaud: Member of a noble family and friend of Albert de Morcerf.
Louise d’Armilly: Eugénie Danglars’s music instructor and her intimate friend.
Monsieur de Boville: Originally an inspector of prisons, later a detective in the Paris force, and still later the Receiver-General of the charities.
Barrois: Old, trusted servant of Monsieur Noirtier.
Monsieur d’Avrigny: Family doctor treating the Villefort family.
Major (also Marquis) Bartolomeo Cavalcanti: Old man who plays the role of Prince Andrea Cavalcanti’s father.
Ali Tebelen (or Ali Tepelini): An Albanian nationalist leader, Pasha of Yanina, whom Fernand Mondego betrays, leading to Ali Pasha’s murder at the hands of the Turks and the seizure of his kingdom. His wife Vasiliki and daughter Haydée are sold into slavery by Fernand.
Countess Teresa Guiccioli: Her name is not actually stated in the novel. She is referred to as “Countess G—”.
Background to elements of the plot
Georges, a short novel by Dumas, was published in 1843, preceding when The Count of Monte Cristo was written. Georges is of particular interest to scholars because Dumas reused many of the ideas and plot devices in The Count of Monte Cristo.
Dumas wrote that the germ of the idea of revenge as one this novel’s themes sprung from an anecdote (Le Diamant et la Vengeance) written by Jacques Peuchet, an archivist of the Paris police, and published in the multi-volume Mémoires tirés des Archives de la Police de Paris (Memoirs from the Archives of the Paris Police) in France in 1838. Dumas included this essay in one of the editions of his novel published in 1846.
Peuchet related the tale of a shoemaker, Pierre Picaud, living in Nîmes in 1807. Picaud was engaged to marry a wealthy woman, but 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 was a servant to a rich Italian cleric.
The cleric began to treat Picaud like a son, and when the cleric died, he left his fortune to Picaud. Picaud 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 he poisoned the second. The third man, named Loupian, had married Picaud’s fiancée while Picaud was under arrest. Picaud lured Loupian’s son into crime and his daughter into prostitution, and then he fatally stabbed Loupian.
In another of the true stories reported by Ashton-Wolfe, Peuchet describes a poisoning in a family. This story is also mentioned in the Pléiade edition of this novel, 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, Abbé Faria, did exist. He was imprisoned but did not die in prison; he died in 1819 and left no large legacy to anyone. 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.
Publication
The Count of Monte Cristo was originally published in the Journal des Débats in eighteen parts. Serialization ran from 28 August 1844 to 15 January 1846. The first edition in book form was published in Paris by Pétion in 18 volumes with the first two issued in 1844 and the remaining sixteen in 1845. Most of the Belgian pirated editions, the first Paris edition and many others up to the Lécrivain et Toubon illustrated edition of 1860 feature a misspelling of the title with “Christo” used instead of “Cristo”. The first edition to feature the correct spelling was the L’Écho des Feuilletons illustrated edition, Paris 1846. This edition featured plates by Paul Gavarni and Tony Johannot and was said to be “revised” and “corrected”, although only the chapter structure appears to have been altered with an additional chapter entitled La Maison des Allées de Meilhan having been created by splitting Le Départ into two.
English translations
The first appearance of The Count of Monte Cristo in English was the first part of a serialization by W. Harrison Ainsworth in volume VII of Ainsworth’s Magazine published in 1845, although this was an abridged summary of the first part of the novel only and was entitled The Prisoner of If. Ainsworth translated the remaining chapters of the novel, again in abridged form, and issued these in volumes VIII and IX of the magazine in 1845 and 1846 respectively. Another abridged serialization appeared in The London Journal between 1846 and 1847.
The first single volume translation in English was an abridged edition with woodcuts published by Geo Pierce in January 1846 entitled The Prisoner of If or The Revenge of Monte Christo.
In April 1846, volume three of the Parlour Novelist, Belfast, Ireland: Simms and M’Intyre, London: W S Orr and Company, featured the first part of an unabridged translation of the novel by Emma Hardy. The remaining two parts would be issued as the Count of Monte Christo volumes I and II in volumes 8 and 9 of the Parlour Novelist respectively.
The most common English translation is an anonymous one originally published in 1846 by Chapman and Hall. This was originally released in ten weekly installments from March 1846 with six pages of letterpress and two illustrations by M Valentin. The translation was released in book form with all twenty illustrations in two volumes in May 1846, a month after the release of the first part of the above-mentioned translation by Emma Hardy. The translation follows the revised French edition of 1846, with the correct spelling of “Cristo” and the extra chapter The House on the Allées de Meilhan.
Most English editions of the novel follow the anonymous translation. In 1889, two of the major American publishers Little Brown and T.Y. Crowell updated the translation, correcting mistakes and revising the text to reflect the original serialized version. This resulted in the removal of the chapter The House on the Allées de Meilhan, with the text restored to the end of the chapter called The Departure.
In 1955, Collins published an updated version of the anonymous translation which cut several passages, including a whole chapter entitled The Past, and renamed others. This abridgment was republished by many Collins imprints and other publishers including the Modern Library, Vintage, and the 1998 Oxford World’s Classics edition (later editions restored the text). In 2008 Oxford released a revised edition with translation by David Coward. The 2009 Everyman’s Library edition reprints the original anonymous English translation that first appeared in 1846, with revisions by Peter Washington and an introduction by Umberto Eco.
In 1996, Penguin Classics published a new translation by Robin Buss. Buss’ translation updated the language, making the text more accessible to modern readers, and restored content that was modified in the 1846 translation because of Victorian English social restrictions (for example, references to Eugénie’s lesbian traits and behavior) to reflect Dumas’ original version.
In addition to the above, there have also been many abridged translations such as an 1892 edition published by F.M. Lupton, translated by Henry L. Williams (this translation was also released by M.J. Ivers in 1892 with Williams using the pseudonym of Professor William Thiese). A more recent abridgment is the translation by Lowell Bair for Bantam Classics in 1956.
Many abridged translations omit the Count’s enthusiasm for hashish. When serving a hashish jam to the young Frenchman Franz d’Épinay, the Count (calling himself Sinbad the Sailor), calls it, “nothing less than the ambrosia which Hebe served at the table of Jupiter”. When he arrives in Paris, the Count brandishes an emerald box in which he carries small green pills compounded of hashish and opium which he uses for sleeplessness. (Source: Chapters 31, 32, 38, 40, 53 & 77 in the 117-chapter unabridged Pocket Books edition.) Dumas was a member of the Club des Hashischins.
In June 2017, Manga Classics, an imprint of UDON Entertainment, published The Count of Monte Cristo as a faithfully adapted manga.
Japanese translations
The first Japanese translation by Kuroiwa Shūroku was entitled “Shigai Shiden Gankutsu-ou” (史外史伝巌窟王, A historical story from outside history, the King of the Cavern), and serialized from 1901 to 1902 in the newspaper Yorozu Chōhō. It was released in book form in four volumes by publisher Aoki Suusandou in 1905. Though later translations use the title “Monte Cristo-haku” (モンテ・クリスト伯, The Count of Monte Cristo), the “Gankutsu-ou” title remains highly associated with the novel and is often used as an alternative. As of March 2016, all movie adaptations of the novel brought to Japan used the title “Gankutsu-ou”, with the exception of the 2002 film, which has it as a subtitle (with the title itself simply being Monte Cristo).
The novel is popular in Japan, and has spawned numerous adaptations, the most notable of which are the novels Meiji Gankutsu-ou by Taijirou Murasame and Shin Gankutsu-ou by Kaitarō Hasegawa. Its influence can also be seen in perception of one of the first prominent cases of miscarriage of justice in Japan,
