author
Choderlos de Laclos
1741–1803
Best known for the scandalous and brilliantly sharp Dangerous Liaisons, this French writer built his fame on a single novel that still feels modern in its psychological insight. He also spent much of his life as an artillery officer, moving between military service and literary ambition.
4 Audiobooks
Les liaisons dangereuses, volume 2 (of 2) or, Letters collected in a private society and published for the instruction of others
by Choderlos de Laclos
Dangerous Connections, v. 1, 2, 3, 4 A Series of Letters, selected from the Correspondence of a Private Circle; and Published for the Instruction of Society.
by Choderlos de Laclos
About the author
Born in Amiens in 1741, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was a French soldier and writer whose full name was Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos. Reliable reference sources describe him as both a career military officer and the author of Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons), the 1782 epistolary novel that secured his place in literary history.
That novel, told through letters, became famous for its cool intelligence, moral ambiguity, and unusually sharp understanding of manipulation and desire. Britannica identifies it as a classic and an early example of the psychological novel, which helps explain why Laclos remains widely read even though his literary reputation rests mainly on this one book.
Laclos lived through the upheavals of the French Revolution and continued his public and military career alongside his writing. He died in 1803 in Taranto, Italy, leaving behind a remarkably small body of fiction but one book with an outsized legacy.