Physical description

Hard cover book. The Fencing Master
Author: Alexandre Dumas
Translator: Alfred Richard Allinson
Illustrator: Alan J. Bowyer
Publisher: Collins Clear Type Press
Date: 1959
Further Information: Black embossed patterning Cloth hardcover with lettering and patterning to spine in gilt. The spine has a Library label with an inscription.

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on the spine with the typed text PAT 843 DUM
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Warrnambool Public Library
Front loose end paper has a sticker from Corangamite Regional Library Service
Front loose end paper has a stamp from Corangamite Regional Library Service

Summary

The novel is set in Russia and draws on the 1825 Decembrist revolt, along with behind-the-scenes court stories that the government preferred to keep hidden. It is narrated in the first person by Augustin Grisier, a friend of Dumas who goes to Russia to make his fortune as a swordsman. He teaches young aristocrats in the capital and becomes entangled in the Decembrist plot of the time. The love story is the best-known thread, a well-born young Frenchwoman, Pauline, travels to Russia and falls in love with a Decembrist officer (Ivan Annenkov, called Waninkoff in the novel). After the rebellion is crushed, she follows him to Siberian exile and eventually marries him.
The book was based on notes from Dumas’s own fencing teacher, Grisier, and Dumas borrowed much of his Russian scenery and court detail from Ancelot’s Six mois en Russie. It first appeared serialised in the Revue de Paris in 1840 and then in book form the same year.