:"You can imagine my surprise when, among reels and reels of microfilmed archives, I stumbled upon an almost complete serialised novel, entitled
The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, and signed by Alexandre Dumas". —Claude Schopp (Bell, 2005) The novel
The Knight of Sainte-Hermine concludes the Sainte-Hermine trilogy, a story started in the 1857 novel
The Companions of Jehu (
Les Compagnons de Jehu), and continued in the 1867
The Whites and the Blues (
Les Blancs et Les Bleus). It was originally serialised from January 1 to November 1869 in the French newspaper
Le Moniteur Universel. The rush to publish in a serialised form resulted in the novel's being published with errors, but the newspaper carried almost the entire work. Only a short section was missing at the end, presumably unfinished because of Dumas' final illness. The author died in December 1870. The novel was lost until 1990, when the Dumas expert Claude Schopp discovered references to its material and finally the newspaper serial in the archives of the
Bibliothèque Nationale. Schopp's articles on Dumas' work have been part of a critical reappraisal of the writer, contributing to the government's honoring the author in 2002 by a reinterment ceremony at the Panthéon de Paris. This new material was printed in italics to distinguish it from Dumas's work. The novel was released on June 3, 2005, by Editions aklas. The novel, issued with a run of 2,000 copies, immediately became a bestseller in France, quickly selling 60,000 copies. == Plot ==