Alexandre Dumas

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 131, 24 August 1927, Page 12

Alexandre Dumas

AUTHORITY ON GREAT FRENCH WRITER TELLS OF HIS LIFE AND WORKS

MR. F. W. REED'S LECTURE Most people of Intelligence have enthusiams, but a few only have the ability to communicate their enthusiasm in such a way that other people become sharers of it. Among those who can do this is Air. F. W. Reed, of Whangarei, the greatest authority on the writings of Alexandre Dumas south of the Line, if not in the British Empire. Dumas’s life and work has been his specialised literary study, and his Dumas library and manuscripts will become the property of the City of Auckland when he dies. Last night in the Remuera Library Air. Reed gave a lecture entitled, “Alexandre Dumas, maker of Romances.” and although the audience was small, the enthuisasm and scholarship of the speaker will send many readers to Dumas with fresh relish and understanding. Speaking to his audience in informal causerie style, Mr. Reed gave an outline of the author’s early life, telling of his tardiness at school, his later acquisition of varied knowledge, and his subsequent rise from obscure clerkship to the dramatist who took Paris by storm. “At the time Dumas began writing,” said Mr. Reed, “the young men, who were mostly sons of Napoleon’s warriors. were filled with an unrest, the only outlet for which was literature. “There was then a violent struggle between classical and romantic writers, and Dumas with his play ‘Henry HI. was the first of the romantics to burst through to popular recognition.” Air. Reed told many stories about Dumas, outlined his methods of work, and last of all proved that he never robbed his collaborators.