The Man in the Iron Mask
The d'Artagnan Romances, Book 4
by Alexandre Dumas 1802–1870
The book, and the century it came out of.
Thirty-five years after the musketeers first drew together, Aramis is a bishop with a plan, Porthos does not understand it, Athos is grieving, and d’Artagnan serves a king who has a secret in the Bastille. Dumas ran a fiction factory and outsold all of France; this is the end of the cycle, and he wrote the fall of his own heroes without flinching. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Slabbaert, van Ruisdael and Fabritius among them.
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, by Alexandre Dumas, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Adventure & the Sea
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 536 pages
- Reading time
- about 11 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785501401778
60 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
The end of a twenty-year story, 1850
The last part of the Musketeer cycle, written when Dumas was at the height of his fame and about to lose most of his money. He had built himself a château and a theatre; both were gone within a few years.
The prisoner in the mask was real — a man held for decades under Louis XIV whose identity the state never disclosed, and about whom Voltaire had already speculated in print. Dumas took the historical silence and filled it, which is the whole art of the historical novel.
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
The Man in the Iron Mask, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Adventure & the Sea shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785501401778, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of The Man in the Iron Mask?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Alexandre Dumas's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 536 pages, which is roughly about 11 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
