Crime in nineteenth-century Naples
"Chroniques". Autograph manuscript signed.
4to (218 x 278). 2½ pp. On blue stationery.
€ 3.500,00
A manuscript for Dumas's Neapolitan newspaper "L'Indépendent" in which he recorded several incidents about which he intended to write in the next issue. These include the report of a poor woman from the Pennino district who fell from the third floor while shaking out carpets from her window: "Hier une pauvre femme du quartier Perrino, secouant des tapis par la fenêtre, tomba du troisième étage, etre blessa grièvement sur le pave". Dumas further records a dagger fight, the arrest of a man who had insulted a guard "au par simple distraction", an accident caused by a carriage driver, the revenge of a jealous husband, and the stoning of a pretty girl. He concludes that it would be difficult to believe the lust for evil betrayed by these occurrences, were it not for the obliging reports of the police: "La vérité de nous lesions de pareils facts ailleurs que dans les rapports même que la police nous communiquéz avec une obligéance dans nous ne savions trop la remercier - nous ne croisions pas à une lettre luxure du mal ...".
Alexandre Dumas, author of "Le Comte de Monte-Cristo" and "Les Trois Mousquetaires", founded the newspaper "L'Indépendent" in Naples in 1861, having left France ten years prior due to frictions with Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. Published in Italian, "L'Indépendent" supported the cause of Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Risorgimento. Dumas was convinced that the function of writers in society was through politics, and attempted to enter the political sphere directly through publishing his own newspaper.
