marquis de Sade

Born into the French nobility in 1740, the Marquis de Sade served in the military before becoming notorious for a series of sexual scandals that led to repeated imprisonment. Much of his writing was produced while he was confined, and that sense of pressure, rebellion, and defiance runs through his work.

He is best known for shocking books such as Justine, Juliette, and The 120 Days of Sodom. Their extreme content made him infamous, but he has also drawn lasting interest from readers and scholars because his fiction pushes questions about freedom, power, desire, cruelty, and morality to disturbing extremes.

De Sade lived through the final decades of the French monarchy, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic era, and his life was as dramatic as his reputation. He died in 1814, but debate over whether he should be read as a criminal libertine, a political rebel, or a darkly influential literary experimenter has never really ended.