The novel follows the adventures of an 18-year-old penniless Gascon, d'Artagnan, who comes to Paris to pursue a career in the Musketeers. He befriends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, musketeers serving King Louis XIII. These four men will oppose the Prime Minister, Cardinal Richelieu, and his agents, including the Count of Rochefort and the beautiful and mysterious Milady de Winter, in order to save the honor of the Queen of France, Anne of Austria. With its numerous sword fights and dramatic twists, The Three Musketeers is the quintessential swashbuckling novel, and its success was so great that Dumas himself adapted it for the theater and brought back the four heroes in the rest of the trilogy.

In 1844, Alexandre Dumas published The Three Musketeers, a novel so famous and still so popular today that it scarcely needs introduction. Shortly thereafter he wrote a sequel, Twenty Years After. Later, toward the end of his career, Dumas wrote The Red Sphinx, another direct sequel to The Three Musketeers that begins a mere twenty days afterward. Picking up right where the The Three Musketeers left off, The Red Sphinx continues the stories of Cardinal Richelieu, Queen Anne, and King Louis XIII—and introduces a charming new hero, the Comte de Moret, a real historical figure from the period. Dumas wrote seventy-five chapters of The Red Sphinx, but never quite finished it and the novel languished for almost a century. While Dumas never completed the book, he had earlier written a separate novella, The Dove, that recounts the final adventures of Moret and Cardinal Richelieu. Now for the first time in one cohesive narrative, The Red Sphinx and The Dove make a complete and satisfying storyline—a rip-roaring novel of historical adventure, heretofore unknown to English-language readers, by the great Alexandre Dumas, king of the swashbucklers

The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas’s most famous and enduring novel, completed its serial publication in the summer of 1844, and by the time of its book publication at the end of that year readers were already demanding a sequel. They got it starting in January, 1845, when the first chapters of Twenty Years After began to appear—but it wasn’t quite what they were expecting. When Twenty Years After opens it is 1648: the Red Sphinx, Cardinal Richelieu, is dead, France is ruled by a regency in the grip of civil war, and across the English Channel the monarchy of King Charles I hangs by a thread. As d’Artagnan will find, these are problems that can’t be solved with a sword thrust. In Twenty Years After, the musketeers confront maturity and face its greatest challenge: sometimes, you fail. It’s in how the four comrades respond to failure, and rise above it, that we begin to see the true characters of Dumas’s great heroes. A true literary achievement, Twenty Years After is long overdue for a modern reassessment—and a new translation. As an added inducement to readers, Lawrence Ellsworth has discovered a “lost” chapter that was overlooked in the novel’s original publication, and is included in none of the available English translations to date—until now. With Twenty Years After Dumas’s Musketeers Cycle becomes a real ongoing series, beginning a long story arc that will be continued in The Son of Milady, adventure following adventure until the final climax in The Man in the Iron Mask.

'At this game, whoever does not kill is killed.' Twenty Years After (1845), the sequel to The Three Musketeers, is a supreme creation of suspense and heroic adventure. Two decades have passed since the musketeers triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady. Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and stratagems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. But their greatest test is a titanic struggle with the son of Milady, who wears the face of Evil.

The latest entry in this acclaimed series of new translations of the Musketeer novels, Blood Royal continues the adventures of the valiant d’Artagnan and his three loyal friends. The latest translation in Lawrence Ellsworth’s acclaimed new series of Alexandre Dumas’s greatest adventures is Blood Royal, the second half of what Dumas originally published as Twenty Years After. In this volume all the plots and schemes set up in the previous novel come to dramatic fruition in the kind of exciting thrill-ride Dumas is famous for—while at the same time introducing the characters and themes that form the foundation of the rest of the series, leading to its great climax in The Man in the Iron Mask. In Blood Royal, the Four Musketeers all venture to England on parallel missions to save King Charles I, pursued by the murderous and vengeful Mordaunt, the son of Milady de Winter, the great villain of The Three Musketeers. Despite all his experience, d’Artagnan is repeatedly foiled by the much-younger Mordaunt, who erupts out of the past to embody the strengths of audacity and cunning that were once d’Artagnan’s hallmarks. Mordaunt has corrupted those youthful strengths, and the older d’Artagnan is no match for him until he is able to pull his former team together again. To do this d’Artagnan will have to become a true leader of men, leading not just by example but also by foresight, persuasion, and compromise. Only then can the team of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis be re-formed in all its might to defeat the specter of their past. Blood Royal is unmatched in Dumas’s oeuvre in its depictions of his most famous and beloved characters, and an unforgettable saga of swordplay, suspense, revenge, and ultimate triumph.

The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later (Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ou Dix ans plus tard) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is the third and last of the d'Artagnan Romances following The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After. It appeared first in serial form between 1847 and 1850. In the English translations the 268 chapters of this large volume are usually subdivided into three, but sometimes four or even five individual books. In three-volume English editions, the three volumes are titled "The Vicomte de Bragelonne", "Louise de la Vallire", and "The Man in the Iron Mask." Each of these volumes is roughly the length of the original The Three Musketeers. In four-volume editions, the names of the volumes are kept, except that "Louise de la Vallire" and "The Man in the Iron Mask" are pushed down from second and third to third and fourth, with "Ten Years Later" becoming the second volume. There are usually no volume-specific names in five-volume editions. French academic Jean-Yves Tadi has argued that the beginning of King Louis XIV's personal rule is the novel's real subject. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Vicomte de Bragelonne opens an epic adventure which continues with Louise de La Valliere and reaches its climax in The Man in the Iron Mask. This new edition of the classic translation presents a key episode in the Musketeers saga, fully annotated and with an introduction by a leading Dumas scholar.

For years d’Artagnan shared his adventures with his three comrades—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—but now, in Between Two Kings, the First Musketeer returns to the forefront. This is truly d’Artagnan’s novel, bringing to a dramatic climax the story that began when he first arrived in Paris thirty years earlier in The Three Musketeers. This brand-new translation of Between Two Kings immediately picks up the story and themes of Blood Royal, where d’Artagnan tries to thwart destiny by saving England’s Charles I; now, he will be instrumental in the restoration of his son, Charles II, the first of the two kings of the title. Disappointed in the irresolution of young Louis XIV, d’Artagnan takes a leave of absence from the King’s Musketeers and ventures to England with a bold plan to hoist Charles II onto his throne, a swashbuckling escapade in which he is unwittingly assisted by his old comrade Athos. D’Artagnan returns triumphant to France, where he is recalled to service by the second king, Louis XIV, who is now finally ready to take full advantage of the extraordinary talents of his officer of musketeers. This newly translated volume by Lawrence Ellsworth is the first volume of Alexandre Dumas’s mega-novel Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, the epic finale to the Musketeers Cycle, which will end with the justly-famous The Man in the Iron Mask. This marks the first significant new English translation of this series of novels in over a century.

The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later is the last of the d'Artagnan Romances, which is usually split into three or four volumes. The book at hand is the second volume of the four volume series. Louis XIV is well past the age where he should rule, but the ailing Cardinal Mazarin refuses to relinquish the reins of power. Meanwhile, Charles II, a king without a country, travels Europe seeking aid from his fellow monarchs. Athos still resides at La Fère while his son, Raoul de Bragelonne, has entered into the service in the household of M. le Prince. As for Raoul, he has his eyes on an entirely different object than his father—his childhood companion, Louise de la Valliere, with whom he is hopelessly in love. Porthos, now a baron, is off on some mysterious mission along with Aramis, who is now the Bishop of Vannes.

Book Six in the Musketeers Cycle of Lawrence Ellsworth’s new translations of Alexandre Dumas’ novels of d’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers. Conspiracy swirls around the young King Louis XIV at his palace of Fontainebleau, the Court of Daggers! Aramis plots for power, the Duke of Buckingham schemes for love, Athos ponders glory, Porthos revels in his new nobility, while d’Artagnan bravely defends the throne against all comers. At the center of this hotbed of intrigue stands one young man: Raoul, the Vicomte de Bragelonne. The son of Athos and the protegé of d’Artagnan, there’s only one force Raoul cannot master—his own heart. And when the eyes of his beloved Louise de La Vallière turn toward another’s gaze, Raoul will gamble his position, his honor, and even his life to win her back.

Alexandre Dumas was already a best-selling novelist when he wrote this historical romance, combining (as he claimed) the two essentials of life—"l'action et l'amour." The Man in the Iron Mask concludes the epic adventures of the three Muskateers, as Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and their friend D'Artagnan, once invincible, meet their destinies. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

In the concluding installment of Alexandre Dumas' celebrated cycle of the Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan remains in the service of the corrupt King Louis XIV after the Three Musketeers have retired and gone their separate ways. Unbeknownst to D'Artagnan, Aramis and Porthos plot to remove the inept king and place the king's twin brother on the throne of France. Meanwhile, a twenty-three-year-old prisoner known only as "Philippe" wastes away deep inside the Bastille. Forced to wear an iron mask, Phillippe has been imprisoned for eight years, has no knowledge of his true identity, and has not been told what crime he's committed. When the destinies of the king and Phillippe converge, the Three Musketeers and D'Artagnan find themselves caught between conflicting loyalties.