Who I Am, and Why This Site Exists
I'm Roumen Ivanov. I built and run this site, and this page explains what it is, where the material comes from, and how it was made.
What This Project Is
The World of Alexandre Dumas is a personal project: one place where Dumas's novels are easy to find and read, with guides, history and notes around them. The novels are free online, but they are scattered across archives with inconsistent formatting, dead links and no context. I wanted them together, with something useful next to the text.
The novels are free here because their copyright expired long ago (see Legacy). The guides, comparisons and articles around them were written for this site.
How I Check Things
I check dates, events and the line between what Dumas invented and what he took from history against published scholarship. Each article ends with a list of the books I would start with if you want to look further. Where historians disagree, such as over Mary Stuart's guilt or Lucrezia Borgia's real role in her family's schemes, I say so instead of picking a side.
The novels' text gets the same care. I look for missing chapters, publishers' advertisements bound into old editions and transcription errors before a book goes live. Authorship is also handled openly: where bibliographers dispute Dumas's part in a work, as with The Two Dianas, the book's own page says so.
Sources and Translations
The novel texts come from public-domain English translations in established digital archives. Back matter that isn't part of the novel, such as advertising, errata lists and transcriber's notes, is removed, so you read the story and not the leftovers of a nineteenth-century printing. The original reference pages draw on the biographies and histories listed at the end of each article.
How This Site Is Built
I write this site together with an AI system. It helps me research, draft and build pages, and I edit and publish them. The fan fiction is written that way too, and every story page says it is fan fiction and not Dumas. If you notice something that reads wrong, a bad fact or a clumsy sentence, I'd like to hear about it.
Corrections and Feedback
Across a site this size, mistakes happen. If you spot a factual error, a broken link or a missing chapter, please write to me through the Contact page. I read every message and fix what's wrong.