Before long he finds treachery and court intrigue-and also three boon companions: the daring swordsmen Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.

Now in a bracing new translation, this swashbuckling epic chronicles the adventures of d'Artagnan, a brash young man from the countryside who journeys to Paris in 1625 hoping to become a musketeer and guard to King Louis XIII. The Three Musketeers is the most famous of Alexandre Dumas's historical novels and one of the most popular adventure stories ever written. Dumas rampaged through the history of France, inventing, changing, distorting-doing whatever was needed to produce a tale to hold the reader breathless.A major new translation of one of the most enduring works of literature, from the award- winning, bestselling co-translator of Anna Karenina-with a spectacular, specially illustrated cover The pleasure he must have felt inĬreating D'Artagnan's troubles and triumphs flashes out of these pages. To one who made D'Artagnan all shall be forgiven.' Clifton Fadiman agreed: 'Dumas enjoyed writing his stories. Few, if any, characters in fiction inspire one with such belief in their individual existences. 'His greatest creation is undoubtedly D'Artagnan, type at once of the fighting adventurer and of the trusty servant, whose wily blade is ever at the back of those whose hearts have neither his magnanimity nor his courage. 'Dumas will be read a hundred, nay, three hundred years on,' wrote John Galsworthy.

He soon finds himself fighting alongside three heroic comrades-Athos, Porthos, and Aramis-who seek to uphold the honor of the king by foiling the wicked plots of Cardinal Richelieu and the beautiful spy 'Milady.'

It is all impossible and it is all magnificent.'įirst published in 1844, Alexandre Dumas's swashbuckling epic chronicles the adventures of D'Artagnan, a gallant young nobleman who journeys to Paris in 1625 hoping to join the ranks of musketeers guarding Louis XIII. 'In these violent pages all is action, intrigue, suspense, surprise-an almost endless chain of duels, murders, love affairs, unmaskings, ambushes, hairbreadth escapes, wild rides. 'We read The Three Musketeers to experience a sense of romance and for the sheer excitement of the story,' reflected Clifton Fadiman.

The three musketeers penguin classics