What do you think?
Rate this book
Impressions de voyage
De Paris à Cadix : Impressions de voyage
En 1846, à l'occasion du mariage du duc de Montpensier, Alexandre Dumas décide de se rendre en Espagne, accompagné de quelques amis. Le groupe va ainsi franchir la Bidassoa, passer Burgos, assister aux cérémonies du mariage princier à Madrid où se déroulent de mémorables corridas, puis se diriger vers l'Andalousie. Cordoue, Grenade et Séville seront visitées avec enthousiasme. Ils embarquent plus tard de Cadix pour l'Afrique. Alexandre Dumas nous rapporte avec une égale attention les moeurs des habitants, leurs costumes, leurs curiosités culinaires qu'il apprécie de façon mitigée. Parmi ses compagnons, le peintre Eugène Giraud (1806-1881) a réalisé des dessins de cette épopée picaresque. Alexandre Dumas publia en 1847-48 ses impressions de voyage, sous le titre "De Paris à Cadix", il y adopte le genre littéraire de la correspondance narrative adressée à une mystérieuse dame parisienne.
333 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1847
4 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
Alexandre Dumas
6,177 books12.5k followersThis note regards Alexandre Dumas, père, the father of Alexandre Dumas, fils (son). For the son, see Alexandre Dumas fils.
Alexandre Dumas père, born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a towering figure of 19th-century French literature whose historical novels and adventure tales earned global renown. Best known for The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and other swashbuckling epics, Dumas crafted stories filled with daring heroes, dramatic twists, and vivid historical backdrops. His works, often serialized and immensely popular with the public, helped shape the modern adventure genre and remain enduring staples of world literature.
Dumas was the son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a celebrated general in Revolutionary France and the highest-ranking man of African descent in a European army at the time. His father’s early death left the family in poverty, but Dumas’s upbringing was nonetheless marked by strong personal ambition and a deep admiration for his father’s achievements. He moved to Paris as a young man and began his literary career writing for the theatre, quickly rising to prominence in the Romantic movement with successful plays like Henri III et sa cour and Antony.
In the 1840s, Dumas turned increasingly toward prose fiction, particularly serialized novels, which reached vast audiences through French newspapers. His collaboration with Auguste Maquet, a skilled plotter and historian, proved fruitful. While Maquet drafted outlines and conducted research, Dumas infused the narratives with flair, dialogue, and color. The result was a string of literary triumphs, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, both published in 1844. These novels exemplified Dumas’s flair for suspenseful pacing, memorable characters, and grand themes of justice, loyalty, and revenge.
The D’Artagnan Romances—The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte of Bragelonne—cemented his fame. They follow the adventures of the titular Gascon hero and his comrades Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, blending historical fact and fiction into richly imagined narratives. The Count of Monte Cristo offered a darker, more introspective tale of betrayal and retribution, with intricate plotting and a deeply philosophical core.
Dumas was also active in journalism and theater. He founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris, which staged dramatizations of his own novels. A prolific and energetic writer, he is estimated to have written or co-written over 100,000 pages of fiction, plays, memoirs, travel books, and essays. He also had a strong interest in food and published a massive culinary encyclopedia, Le Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine, filled with recipes, anecdotes, and reflections on gastronomy.
Despite his enormous success, Dumas was frequently plagued by financial troubles. He led a lavish lifestyle, building the ornate Château de Monte-Cristo near Paris, employing large staffs, and supporting many friends and relatives. His generosity and appetite for life often outpaced his income, leading to mounting debts. Still, his creative drive rarely waned.
Dumas’s mixed-race background was a source of both pride and tension in his life. He was outspoken about his heritage and used his platform to address race and injustice. In his novel Georges, he explored issues of colonialism and identity through a Creole protagonist. Though he encountered racism, he refused to be silenced, famously replying to a racial insult by pointing to his ancestry and achievements with dignity and wit.
Later in life, Dumas continued writing and traveling, spending time in Belgium, Italy, and Russia. He supported nationalist causes, particularly Italian unification, and even founded a newspaper to advocate for Giuseppe Garibaldi. Though his popularity waned somewhat in his final years, his literary legacy grew steadily. He wrote in a style that was accessible, entertaining, and emotionally reso
Alexandre Dumas père, born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a towering figure of 19th-century French literature whose historical novels and adventure tales earned global renown. Best known for The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and other swashbuckling epics, Dumas crafted stories filled with daring heroes, dramatic twists, and vivid historical backdrops. His works, often serialized and immensely popular with the public, helped shape the modern adventure genre and remain enduring staples of world literature.
Dumas was the son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a celebrated general in Revolutionary France and the highest-ranking man of African descent in a European army at the time. His father’s early death left the family in poverty, but Dumas’s upbringing was nonetheless marked by strong personal ambition and a deep admiration for his father’s achievements. He moved to Paris as a young man and began his literary career writing for the theatre, quickly rising to prominence in the Romantic movement with successful plays like Henri III et sa cour and Antony.
In the 1840s, Dumas turned increasingly toward prose fiction, particularly serialized novels, which reached vast audiences through French newspapers. His collaboration with Auguste Maquet, a skilled plotter and historian, proved fruitful. While Maquet drafted outlines and conducted research, Dumas infused the narratives with flair, dialogue, and color. The result was a string of literary triumphs, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, both published in 1844. These novels exemplified Dumas’s flair for suspenseful pacing, memorable characters, and grand themes of justice, loyalty, and revenge.
The D’Artagnan Romances—The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte of Bragelonne—cemented his fame. They follow the adventures of the titular Gascon hero and his comrades Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, blending historical fact and fiction into richly imagined narratives. The Count of Monte Cristo offered a darker, more introspective tale of betrayal and retribution, with intricate plotting and a deeply philosophical core.
Dumas was also active in journalism and theater. He founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris, which staged dramatizations of his own novels. A prolific and energetic writer, he is estimated to have written or co-written over 100,000 pages of fiction, plays, memoirs, travel books, and essays. He also had a strong interest in food and published a massive culinary encyclopedia, Le Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine, filled with recipes, anecdotes, and reflections on gastronomy.
Despite his enormous success, Dumas was frequently plagued by financial troubles. He led a lavish lifestyle, building the ornate Château de Monte-Cristo near Paris, employing large staffs, and supporting many friends and relatives. His generosity and appetite for life often outpaced his income, leading to mounting debts. Still, his creative drive rarely waned.
Dumas’s mixed-race background was a source of both pride and tension in his life. He was outspoken about his heritage and used his platform to address race and injustice. In his novel Georges, he explored issues of colonialism and identity through a Creole protagonist. Though he encountered racism, he refused to be silenced, famously replying to a racial insult by pointing to his ancestry and achievements with dignity and wit.
Later in life, Dumas continued writing and traveling, spending time in Belgium, Italy, and Russia. He supported nationalist causes, particularly Italian unification, and even founded a newspaper to advocate for Giuseppe Garibaldi. Though his popularity waned somewhat in his final years, his literary legacy grew steadily. He wrote in a style that was accessible, entertaining, and emotionally reso
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 24, 2013
Found this title on the back of a classic lit shelf in a used book store. I love finding titles like these. I had no idea before reading this that Dumas even wrote travel logs!
The writing itself is exciting and colorful. Bull fights, beautiful women, landscapes, food, and way more. All written as letters to the unknown Madame.
The writing itself is exciting and colorful. Bull fights, beautiful women, landscapes, food, and way more. All written as letters to the unknown Madame.
January 9, 2014
Great book. Dumas' non-fiction reads like a novel. And it ended with a cliff hanger.
January 30, 2021
A lovely companion piece to the Dumas's other non-fiction travelogue by the same publisher, Adventures in the Caucasus. Looking to avoid some work and impending lawsuits back in France, Dumas accepts two separate invitations to events in Spain and Africa.
Unlike 'Adventures in the Caucasus' where Dumas travels "light" with only his artist friend and a rotating band of Cossacks, in Spain, he travels with an increasingly numerous band of his countrymen. At the height of his international renown at the time, he's often met with a more or less royal reception wherever he goes. As I said in my review of 'Caucasus', Dumas "often comes off as a charming and worldly bon vivant with an infectious lust for life. He evidently loved seeing new things and meeting new people, and his enthusiasm bursts out all over the place." He loves good food and drink (though he finds both lacking in Spain), good company (most of which he brings with him), and he enjoys ladies.
Although a little less colourful and sprited than 'Caucasus', Dumas cooks up a few adventures here and there: run-ins with (perhaps imagined) bandits, swaggering gun-toting encounters, etc.
He's often quite funny, too, and his easygoing character shines throughout.
Nice and apparently now quite rare edition published by Peter Owen in London, translated by AE Murch (save for the very poor half-tone reproductions of illustrations on jarring glossy paper).
Unlike 'Adventures in the Caucasus' where Dumas travels "light" with only his artist friend and a rotating band of Cossacks, in Spain, he travels with an increasingly numerous band of his countrymen. At the height of his international renown at the time, he's often met with a more or less royal reception wherever he goes. As I said in my review of 'Caucasus', Dumas "often comes off as a charming and worldly bon vivant with an infectious lust for life. He evidently loved seeing new things and meeting new people, and his enthusiasm bursts out all over the place." He loves good food and drink (though he finds both lacking in Spain), good company (most of which he brings with him), and he enjoys ladies.
Although a little less colourful and sprited than 'Caucasus', Dumas cooks up a few adventures here and there: run-ins with (perhaps imagined) bandits, swaggering gun-toting encounters, etc.
He's often quite funny, too, and his easygoing character shines throughout.
Nice and apparently now quite rare edition published by Peter Owen in London, translated by AE Murch (save for the very poor half-tone reproductions of illustrations on jarring glossy paper).
July 10, 2020
Nouvelle lecture terminée : le récit de voyage en Espagne d’Alexandre Dumas (père). Dans De Paris à Cadix, il raconte sous forme de roman épistolaire (puisqu’il écrit à une „madame“, résidant à Paris mais surtout fictive...) son voyage à travers l’Espagne, accompagné de son fils et de quelques amis. Ce livre fait voyager et permet de découvrir l’Espagne (et ses us et coutumes) du 19eme siècle. Je conseille vivement : c’est superbement bien écrit (ça n’eut étonné personne, n’est-ce pas ?) et par conséquent très agréable à lire. Bonne lecture !
June 15, 2021
It turns out, Dumas wrote a bunch of travelogues documenting his own adventures around the world! Traveling through Southern Spain in the 1800s proved to be quite an undertaking, and I kept having to remind myself this wasn’t one of his novels! Such an enjoyable read, and so eye opening about travel at that time...
September 1, 2020
Demasiado pedante, engreído pero tiene algunos pasajes en que se describe España de mediados del XIX.
May 19, 2023
Quant aux armes, il n'y fallait pas songer, on voyait dans chaque voyageur portant une canne à épée un carliste, un républicain ou un espartériste
Espartero was in exile in England during 1846.
cour des messageries Laffitte et Caillard
Les diligences Laffitte et Caillard. Diligence Laffitte et Caillard. Diligences anciennes.
De Paris a Cádiz, el viaje por España de Alejandro Dumas
roue près de laquelle la roue qui reste à la machine de Marly n'est qu'une roue de montre
C'est une des montagnes qui s'elèvent à la gauche du chemin conduisant d'Aranda à Madrid, qui fut emportée, aux yeux de Napoléon, par la cavalerie polonaise
Antonio de Orleans. Matrimonio con María Luisa Fernanda de Borbón.
cette grande et belle nature à la Salvator Rosa
The traveller's oracle; or, maxims for locomotion, part 2
See also: Voyage En Espagne: Théophile Gautier
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews