50 free Alexandre Dumas trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Alexandre Dumas wrote 100,000 pages, kept 40 mistresses, built a château named after his own novel and died broke as the Franco-Prussian War drowned out the news. His father, the son of a French marquis and an enslaved African woman, was a general at 31 and Napoleon's Black Devil; his son was a playwright too, so the world calls him Dumas père. These 50 questions cover the life and the books: The Three Musketeers and its real-life inspirations, The Count of Monte Cristo and the shoemaker Pierre Picaud, the ghostwriter Auguste Maquet and his lawsuit, the Fencing Master banned by the Tsar, the hashish club he shared with Hugo and Baudelaire, exile in Brussels, Garibaldi and L'Indépendant, the cookbook published after his death and the 2002 procession that carried him to the Panthéon behind four mounted musketeers. Easy questions stick to the famous titles and characters; the expert tier asks about Adah Isaacs Menken, Frank Wild Reed and Claude Schopp. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a book-club night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Besides novels, what did Dumas write from the very start of his career?
Plays
His first play was produced in 1829 and he founded his own theatre in the 1840s.
Q 02Who is the hero of The Count of Monte Cristo?
Edmond Dantès
The young sailor is loosely based on a real shoemaker named Pierre Picaud.
Q 03In which prison is the hero of Monte Cristo locked up?
Château d'If
The real fortress sits on an island in the bay of Marseille.
Q 04Which fellow prisoner educates Dantès and reveals the treasure?
Abbé Faria
A real Abbé Faria existed, though he did not die in prison or leave a fortune.
Q 05What were the names of the three musketeers who befriend d'Artagnan?
Athos, Porthos and Aramis
They called themselves the three inseparables.
Q 06From which region of France does d'Artagnan set out for Paris?
Gascony
He is loosely based on the real soldier Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan.
Q 07Who is the villainous spy working for Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers?
Milady de Winter
She is branded with a fleur-de-lis and turns out to be Athos's former wife.
Q 08In which newspaper was The Three Musketeers first serialised in 1844?
Le Siècle
The Count of Monte Cristo ran in the Journal des Débats the same year.
Q 09Which 1700 work by Courtilz de Sandras inspired The Three Musketeers?
Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan
Dumas pretended he had found the musketeers' story in a recovered manuscript.
Q 10Which siege do d'Artagnan and his friends fight at in The Three Musketeers?
La Rochelle
They hold the St. Gervais bastion for an hour and a half on a bet.
Q 11Which English duke does Milady have assassinated?
Buckingham
She seduces her Puritan guard John Felton into doing the deed.
Q 12What is the best-known third part of The Vicomte de Bragelonne called in English?
The Man in the Iron Mask
English editions usually split the huge novel into three volumes.
Q 13Which novel is the direct sequel to The Three Musketeers?
Twenty Years After
The trilogy finishes with The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later.
Who was Dumas's best-known ghostwriting collaborator?
Q 21For which future king did the young Dumas work before becoming a writer?
Louis-Philippe of Orléans
The 1830 Revolution put his old employer on the throne as the Citizen King.
Q 22What was Dumas's first play, produced to acclaim in 1829?
Henry III and His Court
It was the first great Romantic historical drama on the Paris stage, a year before Hugo's Hernani.
Q 23Which English actor's life inspired an 1836 Dumas play that bears his name?
Edmund Kean
Frédérick Lemaître played the English tragedian in the production.
Auguste Maquet
Maquet sued for recognition and won more money but never a by-line.
Q 15What did Maquet win when he took Dumas to court?
More money but no by-line
His role in the novels was not fully understood until the late 20th century.
Q 16In which French colony was Dumas's father born?
Saint-Domingue
The colony is present-day Haiti; his mother Marie-Cessette was an enslaved African woman.
Q 17What nickname did Austrian troops give General Dumas in 1797?
The Black Devil
Napoleon called him the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol for holding a bridge alone.
Q 18Where was General Dumas imprisoned for two years after leaving Egypt in 1799?
The Kingdom of Naples
His unsound ship ran aground and he was thrown into a dungeon until 1801.
Q 19What does the surname Dumas probably mean?
Of the farm
It may simply have signified that Marie-Cessette belonged to the farm property.
Q 20In which town was Dumas born and first buried?
Villers-Cotterêts
Villagers there objected when his remains were moved to the Panthéon in 2002.
Q 24What was Dumas's first serial novel, published in 1836?
La Comtesse de Salisbury
Le Capitaine Paul, partly based on John Paul Jones, followed in 1838.
Q 25Which Scottish-American naval officer inspired a Dumas serial novel of 1838?
John Paul Jones
Dumas rewrote one of his own plays as the serial novel.
Q 26Dumas's 1840 novel about the Decembrist revolt was banned in which country?
Russia
It depicted the Decembrist revolt; Tsar Nicholas I barred Dumas from visiting until after his death.
Q 27Augustin Grisier, co-author of the novel Le Maître d'armes, was Dumas's what?
Fencing master
Dumas refers to him respectfully in The Count of Monte Cristo and The Corsican Brothers.
Q 28Roughly how many pages did Dumas publish in his lifetime?
100,000
He also ran a studio of writers who turned out stories under his direction.
Q 29What was the name of the country house Dumas built outside Paris in 1846?
Château de Monte-Cristo
He sold the whole property two years later to pay his debts; today it is a museum.
Q 30About how many mistresses have scholars attributed to Dumas?
40
He fathered at least four children by them, including Alexandre Dumas fils.