“The Lady of the Camellias” was written based on personal experience of Dumas. In the early 1840s, he met a hetaera, named Mary·Deep Lacey, whose real name is Halfon Xena·Plessy, especially loved camellias. He soon became her lover and was in debts for her. But in the following year, they had an argument and cut off contact. In 1846, she secretly married to an earl. In early 1847, Mary died in Paris when she was twenty-three. Dumas heard the sad news in Marseille and came back to Paris. And afterwards, he finished writing “The Lady of The Camellias” within one month.
