Reading Order
The Count of Monte Cristo Reading Order
The Count of Monte Cristo (Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, 1844–46) by Alexandre Dumas is the most celebrated adventure novel in the French literary tradition and one of the most widely read novels in the world — a vast, propulsive story of betrayal, imprisonment, escape, treasure, and revenge that has delighted readers for nearly two centuries. The novel begins in 1815: Edmond Dantès, a young sailor on the verge of happiness (a promising career, a beautiful fiancée, a devoted father), is falsely accused of Bonapartist treason by a group of enemies motivated by jealousy and self-interest and is imprisoned in the Château d'If, the island prison in the Bay of Marseille. He spends fourteen years in prison, during which he meets the Abbé Faria, a learned prisoner who educates him and reveals to him the existence of a treasure buried on the island of Monte Cristo. After escaping, recovering the treasure, and transforming himself into the fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo, he methodically destroys the men who ruined his life. Dumas wrote the novel in serial installments for the Journal des débats, working with a collaborator, Auguste Maquet, who helped with research and plotting (the same arrangement he used for The Three Musketeers). The novel is divided into three broad phases: the imprisonment, the discovery and transformation, and the revenge — and each phase has its own emotional register. At approximately 1,200 pages in unabridged translation, it is one of the longest commonly read novels in the French tradition. Dumas, who was mixed-race (his paternal grandmother was an enslaved woman from Saint-Domingue), was one of the most commercially successful writers in nineteenth-century France and spent his vast earnings as fast as he earned them.
Where to start
The Count of Monte Cristo is standalone and complete. The Robin Buss translation (Penguin Classics) is the most complete modern English version. Very long (1,200+ pages unabridged) but extremely fast-paced.
Complete The Count of Monte Cristo Book List
- 1Buy
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas·1844·Dumas's masterwork — Edmond Dantès; false treason accusation; Château d'If imprisonment 1815; the Abbé Faria; the Monte Cristo treasure; the transformation into the Count; systematic revenge on Fernand Mondego, Danglars, Villefort; Robin Buss Penguin translation; 1,200+ pages. - 2Buy
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas·1844·Dumas's companion — D'Artagnan and Athos, Porthos, Aramis; Cardinal Richelieu; the diamond studs; Paris and France in the 1620s; the companion adventure novel in the same serial tradition. - 3Buy
The Man in the Iron Mask
Alexandre Dumas·1850·Dumas's companion — the final volume of the Vicomte de Bragelonne trilogy; the Three Musketeers in their old age; the Iron Mask mystery; often read separately as the sequel that gives the Musketeers their conclusion. - 4Buy
Père Goriot
Honoré de Balzac·1835·Balzac's companion — the other great nineteenth-century French novel about social ambition and the corruption of Parisian society; where Dumas gives us the melodrama of revenge, Balzac gives us the realist anatomy of class. - 5Buy
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo·1862·Hugo's companion — the other great nineteenth-century French epic novel, similarly serialized and similarly obsessed with the question of justice, imprisonment, and social exclusion; Jean Valjean is the companion in the novel's concern with what imprisonment does to a man. - 6Buy
The Prisoner of Zenda
Anthony Hope·1894·Hope's companion in the adventure novel about a commoner who assumes the identity of a king — the English adventure parallel to Monte Cristo's transformation from Edmond Dantès to the Count. - 7Buy
Scaramouche
Rafael Sabatini·1921·Sabatini's companion — the swashbuckling adventure novel set during the French Revolution; shares Monte Cristo's combination of historical pageantry, disguise, revenge, and swordplay. - 8Buy
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith·1955·Highsmith's companion in the novel about a man who assumes a false identity and constructs a new self — the modern psychological thriller parallel to Monte Cristo's transformation from imprisoned sailor to fabulously wealthy Count.
The Count of Monte Cristo — Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Count of Monte Cristo really 1,200 pages?
Yes — in unabridged translation, The Count of Monte Cristo runs to approximately 1,200 pages. Many editions available in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were abridged, cutting subplots and characters, and some readers first encountered the novel in these condensed versions. The Robin Buss Penguin Classics translation is generally considered the most complete and reliable modern English version. Despite the length, the novel is remarkably fast-paced — Dumas was writing for newspaper serialization, where he was paid by the line, and his plots are accordingly dense with incident — and most readers report that the pages fly by in a way that more condensed literary novels do not.
Did Dumas really write this himself?
Dumas worked with a collaborator, Auguste Maquet, who did much of the historical research and contributed to the plotting of both The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Dumas was open about having collaborators, though the degree of their contribution has been debated by scholars. The voice, the energy, and the character of the prose are considered distinctively Dumas's — his collaborators provided raw material that he transformed into the finished novels. This was not unusual in the nineteenth-century serial fiction industry, where the pace of production required more than one person. The question of Dumas's authorship was litigated in his lifetime, and he defended himself against accusations of plagiarism with characteristic wit.
What is the theme of the novel?
The Count of Monte Cristo is a novel about justice — specifically about the relationship between legal justice (which failed Edmond Dantès completely) and personal vengeance (which he enacts with meticulous, almost divine thoroughness). The novel raises the question of whether revenge is ever justified, and whether the satisfaction of revenge is what Dantès thought it would be. Dumas allows Dantès to have his revenge — to destroy each of the men who wronged him — but the novel is not simply a celebration of revenge; it is also a meditation on what the pursuit of revenge costs the avenger in terms of his own humanity. By the novel's end, Dantès has accomplished everything he set out to do, but he has also become something inhuman in the process — a machine of retribution — and the novel asks whether this transformation was worth the price.
Who is Haydée?
Haydée is one of the most important and often-overlooked characters in The Count of Monte Cristo — the daughter of the former Greek rebel leader Ali Pasha, whom Fernand Mondego (now the Count de Morcerf) betrayed to the Turkish authorities. Haydée was enslaved as a result of her father's execution, and the Count of Monte Cristo purchased her freedom. She is fiercely loyal to Monte Cristo, helps him destroy Fernand de Morcerf by providing the evidence of her father's betrayal, and ultimately becomes the novel's love interest — the woman who brings Monte Cristo back from his inhuman pursuit of vengeance and into something resembling ordinary human love. She is one of the most fully realized female characters in Dumas's fiction.
What should I read after The Count of Monte Cristo?
After The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers by Dumas is the companion adventure novel. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo is the companion great nineteenth-century French epic about imprisonment and justice. Père Goriot by Balzac is the companion in the French novel of social ambition and revenge. The Man in the Iron Mask is the conclusion to the Three Musketeers series. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope is the companion in the English adventure tradition.
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