Reflecting on the enduring influence of Georg Lukács’s The Historical Novel, Perry Anderson once noted that historical fictions record “an affirmation of human progress, in and through the conflicts that divide societies and the individuals within them.” Walter Scott is the model. But these tendencies—conflict, division, progress—are also present elsewhere, and not least in the French tradition (profoundly influenced by Scott). La Reine Margot by Alexandre Dumas père, the first installment of which appeared in December 1844, represents a case in point. Set in the midst of the French Wars of Religion, this novel takes conflict and division as its principal themes. After all, the Saint Bartholomew Day’s massacre is represented toward the beginning of the text. Yet in the intrepid figure of Henri de Navarre, the future Henri IV, the faint outlines of stability, and even progress, can be discerned.

Dumas’s reputation among literary critics has been...

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