Alexandre Dumas fils, born in Paris on July 27, 1824, was a distinguished French author and playwright, renowned for his romantic novel La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady of the Camellias), published in 1848. This seminal work was later adapted into Giuseppe Verdi's 1853 opera La traviata (The Fallen Woman), along with numerous stage and film productions, often titled Camille in English-language adaptations. Beyond his literary contributions, Dumas fils' legacy includes his admission to the Académie française in 1874 and receiving the prestigious Légion d'honneur in 1894, a testament to his significant influence in French literature and society.

The son of Alexandre Dumas père, a prolific playwright and author of classics such as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas fils was born out of wedlock to Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay, a dressmaker, and his father. His early years were marked by his father's legal recognition in 1831, which paved the way for a superior education at the Institution Goubaux and the Collège Bourbon. However, this period also witnessed the painful separation from his mother, a theme that profoundly influenced his later works. Dumas fils consistently highlighted the moral purpose of literature in his writing, advocating a sense of duty towards illegitimate children and their mothers, as epitomized in his play The Illegitimate Son (1858).