The prolific Alexandre Dumas, père, launched his writing career as a playwright and produced his first play in 1829. The success it and subsequent plays enjoyed enabled him to focus his efforts full-time on writing, and his interests grew to include novels (including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo) and travel books, as well as the popular Celebrated Crimes series presented here.

The eight-volume series was published in Paris in 1839-40 and contains 18 stories. The book met with instant success and had, as noted in the Introduction, “the added value of giving the modern reader a clear picture of the state of semi-lawlessness which existed in Europe, during the middle ages.” Dumas relates the intrigues of the Borgias and the Cenci; the bloody decades of conflict between the Catholic and Huguenot factions of France; the tragic tale of Mary Queen of Scots; the fates of Urbain Grandier, Karl-Ludwig Sand and Nisida; the ruthless Antoine Derue; the crimes of Marie Leroux and her co-criminal Claude Perregaud; the fascinating legend of "Man in the Iron Mask", Joan of Naples and Martin Guerre; the Marquise de Ganges; the bold and beautiful Marquise de Brinvilliers, poisoner; Turkish tyrant Ali Pacha, the Countess of St-Geran, the calculating Vaninka, and Napoleon’s Admiral Joachim Murat.

This volume relates the stories of the Borgias and the Cenci. The former, a family of Spanish adventurers, came to dominate the Italian peninsula, and, when Rodergio Borgia became Pope Alexander VI, the world of Christendom, in the late 15th century. The Cenci was an aristocratic family, in which rampant sexual and domestic abuse led to murder and very public execution.

Translated by George Burnham Ives