The Count of Monte Cristo was inspired by an anecdote from the Parisian police archives, a pearl of a story, Dumas called it, "A rough, shapeless pearl, of no value, waiting for its jeweller". Edmond Dantè"s betrayal, his incarceration in the fortress-prison of If, his search for Abbé Faria"s hidden treasure, and his reappearance, now fabulously rich, as the brooding, Byronic and vengeful Count of Monte-Cristo - these are the bare outlines of a book which Thackeray, for one, found impossible to put down. Dumas set his magnificent novel of L"action et l"amour in nineteenth-century metropolitan Paris with interludes in Marseilles and Rome. In it he gave free rein to the sensational - hashish-smoking, vampirism and sex - and to his interest in travel, classical myth, the orient, human psychology and disguises. The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-46) is one of the great popular novels of all time, and a landmark in the development of modern popular fiction.