Brief Lives: Marquis De Sade - Softcover

As explicit in his prose as he was in his private life, the Marquis de Sade remains one of the most controversial writers of all time. This new biography, by the acclaimed translator and author David Carter, promises to shock as much as it informs. Arrested many times for sexual misdemeanors, the Marquis de Sade was imprisoned in the Bastille, where he was writing120 Days of Sodom and The Misfortunes of Virtue at the time that it was stormed in 1789. After the French Revolution he was again imprisoned and sent to an asylum, where he wrote diaries and plays. This concise biography offers a fresh look at a relentlessly compelling figure with a fascinating life of scandal and imprisonment.

Dr David Carter has taught at St Andrews and Southampton Universities in the UK and has been Professor of Communicative English at Yonsei University, Seoul. He has published on psychoanalysis, literature, drama, film history and applied linguistics, and now works freelance as a writer, translator and journalist. For Hesperus he has written Brig' Lives: HonorT de Balzac and translated Balzac's 'Sarrasine', Georges Simenon's Three Crimes, and Klaus Mann's Alexander.