Project Gutenberg's The Man in the Iron Mask, by Alexandre Dumas, Pere

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Title: The Man in the Iron Mask

Author: Alexandre Dumas, Pere

Posting Date: August 12, 2008 [EBook #2759]
Release Date: August, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK ***

Produced by John Bursey

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK

by Alexandre Dumas

Transcriber's Notes:

As you may be aware, Project Gutenberg has been involved with the
writings of both the Alexandre Dumases for some time now, and since we
get a few questions about the order in which the books should be read,
and in which they were published, these following comments should
hopefully help most of our readers.

***

The Vicomte de Bragelonne is the final volume of D'Artagnan Romances:
it is usually split into three or four parts, and the final portion
is entitled The Man in the Iron Mask. The Man in the Iron Mask we're
familiar with today is the last volume of the four-volume edition.
[Not all the editions split them in the same manner, hence some of the
confusion...but wait...there's yet more reason for confusion.]

We intend to do ALL of The Vicomte de Bragelonne, split into four
etexts entitled The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise de la
Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask.

One thing that may be causing confusion is that the etext we have now,
entitled Ten Years Later, says it's the sequel to The Three Musketeers.
While this is technically true, there's another book, Twenty Years
After, that comes between. The confusion is generated by the two facts
that we published Ten Years Later BEFORE we published Twenty Years
After, and that many people see those titles as meaning Ten and Twenty
Years "After" the original story...however, this is why the different
words "After" and "Later"...the Ten Years "After" is ten years after
the Twenty Years later...as per history. Also, the third book of the
D'Artagnan Romances, while entitled The Vicomte de Bragelonne, has the
subtitle Ten Years Later. These two titles are also given to different
volumes: The Vicomte de Bragelonne can refer to the whole book, or the
f