The historical romance of a particular country was a popular genre in that day, as Sir Walter Scott (UK) and James Fenimore Cooper (US) were cranking them out at roughly the same time. All perhaps loose with some historical facts but it's fiction, right? "The Count of Monte Cristo" is one of my favorites, my youngest just read it, even taking me to see the actual Ile d'If during his year in France. Besides the historic and adventurous, quite a guilty pleasure in the seething revenge category. Victor Hugo perhaps in the same ? Dumas presided over a kind of writer's factory (like Edison's inventor's factory), correct? Interesting that writers had a very hard time making a living back then, and most of their works weren't classics in their lifetimes (Dickens, Dumas exceptions)