Auguste Maquet

Auguste Maquet (1813-1888) was a French novelist and playwright, born and died in Paris. A member of the Romantic generation of the 1830s, he published early work under the pseudonym Augustus Mac-Keat.

From about 1839 to 1851 he was Alexandre Dumas's chief collaborator, supplying plot outlines, first drafts and historical research for novels including The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Count of Monte-Cristo; he is credited on some eighteen novels in all.

After a financial dispute he sued Dumas for co-authorship and royalties and lost, and the partnership ended in 1851. Maquet went on to write historical romances, plays and opera libretti under his own name. How much of the Dumas novels is his remains debated by scholars.