Monte Cristo Hakushaku (モンテ・クリスト, 伯爵), a manga adaptation of the novel by Ena Moriyama, was published in November 2015.
Chinese translations
The first translation into Chinese was published in 1907. The novel had been a personal favorite of Jiang Qing, and the 1978 translation became one of the first mass-popularized foreign novels in mainland China after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Since then, there have been another 22 Chinese translations.
Reception and legacy
The original work was published in serial form in the Journal des Débats in 1844. Carlos Javier Villafane Mercado described the effect in Europe:
The effect of the serials, which held vast audiences enthralled … is unlike any experience of reading we are likely to have known ourselves, maybe something like that of a particularly gripping television series. Day after day, at breakfast or at work or on the street, people talked of little else.
George Saintsbury stated that “Monte Cristo is said to have been at its first appearance, and for some time subsequently, the most popular book in Europe. Perhaps no novel within a given number of years had so many readers and penetrated into so many different countries.” This popularity has extended into modern times as well. The book was “translated into virtually all modern languages and has never been out of print in most of them. There have been at least twenty-nine motion pictures based on it … as well as several television series, and many movies have worked the name ‘Monte Cristo’ into their titles.” The title Monte Cristo lives on in a “famous gold mine, a line of luxury Cuban cigars, a sandwich, and any number of bars and casinos—it even lurks in the name of the street-corner hustle three-card monte.”
Modern Russian writer and philologist Vadim Nikolayev determined The Count of Monte-Cristo as a megapolyphonic novel.
The novel has been the inspiration for many other books, from Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur (1880), then to a science fiction retelling in Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, and to Stephen Fry’s The Stars’ Tennis Balls (entitled Revenge in the U.S.).
Fantasy novelist Steven Brust’s Khaavren Romances series have all used Dumas novels (particularly the Three Musketeers series) as their chief inspiration, recasting the plots of those novels to fit within Brust’s established world of Dragaera. His 2020 novel The Baron of Magister Valley follows suit, using The Count of Monte Cristo as a starting point. Jin Yong has admitted some influence from Dumas, his favorite non-Chinese novelist. Some commentators feel that the plot of A Deadly Secret resembles The Count of Monte Cristo, except that they are based in different countries and historical periods.
Historical background
In the novel, Dumas tells of the 1815 return of Napoleon I, and alludes to contemporary events when the governor at the Château d’If is promoted to a position at the castle of Ham. The attitude of Dumas towards “bonapartisme” was conflicted. His father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a Haitian of mixed descent, became a successful general during the French Revolution. In 1840, the body of Napoleon I was brought to France and became an object of veneration in the church of Les Invalides, renewing popular patriotic support for the Bonaparte family. As the story opens, the character Dantès is not aware of the politics, considers himself simply a good French citizen, and is caught between the conflicting loyalties of the royalist Villefort during the Restoration, and the father of Villefort, Noirtier, loyal to Napoleon, a firm bonapartist, and the bonapartist loyalty of his late captain, in a period of rapid changes of government in France.
In Causeries (1860), Dumas published a short paper, “État civil du Comte de Monte-Cristo”, on the genesis of his story. It appears that Dumas had close contacts with members of the Bonaparte family while living in Florence in 1841. He sailed around the island of Montecristo in a small boat, accompanied by a young prince, a cousin to Louis Bonaparte, who was to become Emperor Napoleon III of the French ten years later, in 1851. During this trip, he promised that cousin of Louis Bonaparte that he would write a novel with the island’s name in the title. In 1841, when Dumas made his promise, Louis Bonaparte himself was imprisoned at the citadel of Ham – the place mentioned in the novel. Dumas did visit him there, although Dumas does not mention it in “Etat civil”.
Selected adaptations
Film
1908: The Count of Monte Cristo, a silent film starring Hobart Bosworth
1913: The Count of Monte Cristo, a silent film starring James O’Neill
1918: The Count of Monte Cristo, a silent-film serial starring Léon Mathot
1922: Monte Cristo, starring John Gilbert and directed by Emmett J. Flynn
1929: Monte Cristo, restored silent epic directed by Henri Fescourt
1934: The Count of Monte Cristo, directed by Rowland V. Lee
1942: The Count of Monte Cristo (Spanish: El Conde de Montecristo), a Mexican film version, directed by Chano Urueta and starring Arturo de Córdova
1943: The Count of Monte Cristo, directed by Robert Vernay
1946: The Return of Monte Cristo, directed by Henry Levin
1946: The Wife of Monte Cristo, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
1953: The Count of Monte Cristo (Spanish: El Conde de Montecristo), directed by León Klimovsky and starring Jorge Mistral
1954: The Count of Monte Cristo, starring Jean Marais
1958: Vanjikottai Valiban (வஞ்சிக்கோட்டை வாலிபன்), Tamil film adaptation and its Hindi remake Raaj Tilak
1961: Le comte de Monte Cristo, starring Louis Jourdan, directed by Claude Autant-Lara
1968: Sous le signe de Monte Cristo, French film starring Paul Barge, Claude Jade and Anny Duperey, directed by André Hunebelle, and set in 1947
1975: The Count of Monte Cristo, TV film starring Richard Chamberlain, directed by David Greene
1982: Padayottam, a Malayalam film adaption set in Kerala context, directed by Jijo Punnoose, starring Prem Nazir, Madhu, Mammootty and Mohanlal
1986: Veta, Telugu film adaptation
1986: Legacy of Rage, a Cantonese-language adaptation starring Brandon Lee
1986: Asipatha Mamai, a Sinhala adaptation
2002: The Count of Monte Cristo, directed by Kevin Reynolds and starring Jim Caviezel, Dagmara Domińczyk, Richard Harris and Guy Pearce
2024: The Count of Monte Cristo directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière and starring Pierre Niney
Sequel books
In 1853, a work professing to be the sequel of the book, entitled The Hand of the Deceased, appeared in Portuguese and French editions (respectively entitled A Mão do finado and La Main du défunt). The novel, falsely attributed to Dumas, but in fact, originally published anonymously or sometimes attributed to one F. Le Prince, has been traced to Portuguese writer Alfredo Possolo Hogan.
Other sequels include:
1856: The Lord of the World, by Adolf Mützelburg.
1881: The Son of Monte Cristo, Jules Lermina (1839–1915). This novel was divided in the English translation into two books: The Wife of Monte Cristo and The Son of Monte Cristo). Both were published in English in New York, 1884, translated by Jacob Ralph Abarbanell (1852–1922).
1884: Edmond Dantès: The Sequel to Alexander Dumas’ Celebrated Novel The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmund Flagg (1815–1890). Published in English by T.B. Peterson and Brothers in 1886 (no translator credited).
1884: Monte-Cristo’s Daughter: Sequel to Alexander Dumas’ Great Novel, “The Count of Monte-Cristo,” and Conclusion of “Edmond Dantès”, Edmund Flagg. Published in English by T.B. Peterson and Brothers in 1886 (no translator credited).
1885: The Treasure of Monte-Cristo, Jules Lermina (1839–1915).
1869: The Countess of Monte Cristo, Jean Charles Du Boys (1836–1873). Published in English by T.B. Peterson and Brothers in 1871 (no translator credited).
1887: Monte Cristo and his wife, presumably by Jacob Ralph Abarbanell.
1902: Countess of Monte Cristo, by Jacob Ralph Abarbanell.
Plays and musicals
Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet wrote a set of four plays that collectively told the story of The Count of Monte Cristo: Monte Cristo Part I (1848); Monte Cristo Part II (1848); Le Comte de Morcerf (1851) and Villefort (1851). The first two plays were first performed at Dumas’ own Théâtre Historique in February 1848, with the performance spread over two nights, each with a long duration (the first evening ran from 18:00 until 00:00). The play was also unsuccessfully performed at Drury Lane in London later that year where rioting erupted in protest against French companies performing in England.
The adaptation differs from the novel in many respects: several characters, such as Luigi Vampa, are excluded; whereas the novel includes many different plot threads that are brought together at the conclusion, the third and fourth plays deal only with the fate of Mondego and Villefort respectively (Danglars’s fate is not featured at all); the play is the first to feature Dantès shouting “the world is mine!”, an iconic line that would be used in many future adaptations.
Two English adaptations of the novel were published in 1868. The first, by Hailes Lacy, differs only slightly from Dumas’ version with the main change being that Fernand Mondego is killed in a duel with the Count rather than committing suicide. Much more radical was the version by Charles Fechter, a notable French-Anglo actor. The play faithfully follows the first part of the novel, omits the Rome section and makes several sweeping changes to the third part, among the most significant being that Albert is actually the son of Dantès.
The fates of the three main antagonists are also altered: Villefort, whose fate is dealt with quite early on in the play, kills himself after being foiled by the Count trying to kill Noirtier (Villefort’s half brother in this version); Mondego kills himself after being confronted by Mercedes; Danglars is killed by the Count in a duel. The ending sees Dantès and Mercedes reunited and the character of Haydee is not featured at all.
The play was first performed
