It is not for me to appreciate their literary value. Translated into all languages they have gone as far as steam can carry them. Though I am not the least worthy of the three, these works have made me the most popular in the five parts of the world, perhaps because the first is a thinker, the second a dreamer, while I am, myself, only a vulgarizer."
Though Dumas waxed hyperbolic with his output--the actual number of over 300 titles was large enough by all standards--he was spot on with his self- criticism. "Vulgarizer" might be a bit harsh, but received literary criticism has labeled him a popularizer, and this label has kept him in the anteroom of the literary greats ever since his death. Though two of his novels, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, are still so widely read that they have become part of a shared mythic history, Dumas and his works "have been largely unappreciated by critics," according to Barbara T. Cooper in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. Cooper posited three reasons for such critical neglect in the face of such popular acclaim. First there is the notoriety surrounding the life of Dumas.
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