Alexandre Dumas, Auguste Maquet

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) and Auguste Maquet (1813–1888) wrote together for a decade, and the books everyone knows as Dumas's came out of that partnership: Maquet worked up the history and drafted the plots, Dumas wrote the version that was published. Dumas was the grandson of an enslaved woman in Saint-Domingue and the son of one of Napoleon's generals, and he produced serial fiction at industrial speed for the newspapers of his day. Maquet sued for credit and a share of the proceeds in 1858 and largely lost. The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers are both theirs.