Two former lovers embark on a game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded existences. While the Marquise de Merteuil challenges the Vicomte de Valmont to seduce an innocent girl, the Vicomte is also occupied with the conquest of a married woman. But the consequences prove to[...]
The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. Its prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil--gifted, wealthy, and bored--form an unholy alliance and turn [...]
'I resolved to write a book which would create some stir in the world and continue to do after I had gone from it' - Choderlos de Laclos. A great sensation at the time of first publication, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" reads as much the most 'modern' of eighteenth-century novels. Viewed by some critic[...]
In this famous story of seduction, two highly intelligent but amoral French aristocrats plot the downfall of a respectable young married woman and a fifteen year old girl who has only just emerged from the convent. The letters these two conspirators exchange are remarkably frank in describing how t[...]