That book’s original 19th century translators, conforming to the delicate sensibilities of audiences across the Channel and the Atlantic, excised much of the sex, gambling, and bloodshed from what was once a happily raunchy historical adventure, transforming it into a fun but politely Victorian story for boys.
This is nowhere more true than in the case of his most famous and endlessly-adapted novel, The Three Musketeers. For such an enduringly popular writer, Alexandre Dumas, pere, has been surprisingly ill-served by his English-language translators.
