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Shop nowTwenty Years After
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Learn moreA new translation picking up twenty years after the conclusion of The Three Musketeers and continuing the adventures of the valiant d’Artagnan and his three loyal friends
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, 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.
Dumas’s rousing sequel to The Three Musketeers continues in Blood Royal, the second half of what Dumas originally published as Twenty Years After.
Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), whose works have been translated into nearly 100 languages, is among the most widely read French authors. Many of his historical adventure novels were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. His works have been adapted into nearly 200 films. Dumas' unfinished last novel, The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, was completed in 2005, and quickly became a best seller.
John Lee has read more than 100 audiobooks. His work has garnered multiple Earphones Awards and won AudioFile's Best Voice in Fiction & Classics in both 2008 and 2009. Lee narrated the audiobook for A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin, volume four of A Song of Ice and Fire. He has also read for Jack London, John Banville, Charles Dickens, and Barbara Taylor Bradford. In addition, Lee narrates video games, does voice-over work, and writes plays. He is also an accomplished stage actor and has written and co-produced the feature films Breathing Hard and Forfeit. He played Alydon in the 1963–64 Doctor Who serial The Daleks.
Lawrence Ellsworth is the pen name of Lawrence Schick. An authority on historical adventure fiction, Ellsworth is the translator of Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Red Sphinx, and Blood Royal. He was born in the United States and now lives in Dublin.
Reviews
Good fun!”
“Dumas never stints the action, witty dialogue, and surprising plot developments. As gradually grows clear, his overriding theme is loyalty—to friends, family and party but, above all, to living by a principled code of honor in a debased and chaotic world. If you only know The Three Musketeers, you owe yourself the pleasure of spending some happy evenings with Twenty Years After. Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D’Artagnan may be older and their hair starting to gray, but they’ve lost none of their romance and grandeur.”
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