Short answers, pulled from the story.
Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie entered the world on the 24th of July 1802 in Villers-Cotterêts, France. His father was Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a general born in Saint-Domingue to a French nobleman and an enslaved woman named Marie-Cessette.
His first play Henry III and His Court opened in 1829 when he was twenty-seven years old. He switched from plays to novels in the mid-1830s with La Comtesse de Salisbury appearing between July and September 1836. Le Capitaine Paul followed in 1838 as another successful historical novel based on the life of John Paul Jones.
Auguste Maquet was the best known among his collaborators who worked at a production studio staffed with writers under Dumas direction. From 1839 to 1841 they compiled Celebrated Crimes an eight-volume collection about famous criminals. Maquet took Dumas to court later to get authorial recognition and higher payment rates but succeeded only in getting more money without a by-line.
Dumas died on the 5th of December 1870 at the age of sixty-eight possibly from a heart attack. His death was overshadowed by the Franco-Prussian War which occurred during that same year.
He was initially buried at his birthplace of Villers-Cotterêts in the department of Aisne. For the bicentenary of his birth in 2002 President Jacques Chirac held a ceremony re-intering his ashes at the Panthéon after villagers initially opposed the move arguing that Dumas wanted to be buried in his hometown cemetery.