
×
Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.
For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.

Dangerous Liaisons
448
by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Helen Constantine (Introduction)Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
13.0
In Stock
Overview
A new translation of one of the most notorious novels of all time
Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives. While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, he is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. Eventually their human pawns respond, and the consequences prove to be more serious--and deadly--than the players could have ever predicted.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives. While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, he is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. Eventually their human pawns respond, and the consequences prove to be more serious--and deadly--than the players could have ever predicted.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780140449570 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 10/30/2007 |
Series: | Penguin Classics Series |
Edition description: | Revised |
Pages: | 448 |
Sales rank: | 103,825 |
Product dimensions: | 5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.02(d) |
Age Range: | 18 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Pierre Choderlos De Laclos (1741-1803) was born in Amiens. His family was respectable but not distinguished, and at eighteen he entered the army and spent the next twenty years in various garrison towns, and reached the rank of capitaine-commandant without ever seeing battle. He cut a dash in provincial society, however, and in his spare time wrote light verse, some of which was published. He wrote the libretto for Ernestine, a comic opera, which was produced in Paris in 1777, but was not received well. In 1779 he was sent to the island of Aix, off La Rochelle, where Les Liaisons Dangereuses was conceived and written. He went to Paris in 1781 to supervise the publishing of his book, overstayed his leave and was promptly ordered back to his regiment. He married Marie-Solange Duperre in 1786 and proved to be an exemplary husband and father. He left the army in 1788, entering politics, and was imprisoned twice during the Reign of Terror, but returned to the army as a general under Napoleon in 1800. He died in Italy in 1803. Laclos also wrote a treatise on the education of women and on Vauban. Towards the end of his life he was considering writing another one to show that true happiness could only be attained in family life.
What People are Saying About This
From the Publisher
"If this book burns, it burns as only ice can burn."
-Baudelaire
Customer Reviews
Related Searches
Explore More Items
In this collection readers will find three of Herman Melville's most popular shorter works, Benito ...
In this collection readers will find three of Herman Melville's most popular shorter works, Benito
Cereno, Bartleby: The Scrivener, and The Encantadas. Considered to be one of Melville's best short stories, Benito Cereno is a tale of the revolt aboard ...
As a result of his controversial works criticizing the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox ...
As a result of his controversial works criticizing the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox
Church, Tolstoy was excommunicated in 1901, dismissing the event lightly as he continued his search for a practical religion. A Confession and Other Religious Works ...
First published in 1922, “The Enchanted April” by British author Elizabeth von Arnim is the ...
First published in 1922, “The Enchanted April” by British author Elizabeth von Arnim is the
story of four very different English women who spend a month vacationing together in Italy at the Tuscan Villa, San Salvatore. Each finding themselves in ...
First appearing in a pamphlet in 1888, Gregg Shorthand is the popular and enduring form ...
First appearing in a pamphlet in 1888, Gregg Shorthand is the popular and enduring form
of shorthand created by Irish publisher and inventor John Robert Gregg. The system was expanded, revised, and published in multiple book editions over several decades ...
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a celebrated French novelist, poet, playwright, dramatist, essayist and statesman whose ...
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a celebrated French novelist, poet, playwright, dramatist, essayist and statesman whose
work ushered in the Romantic literary movement in France, one of the most influential movements in French and all European literary history. Like many of ...
An important work of Spain’s Golden Age of literature as well as the first known ...
An important work of Spain’s Golden Age of literature as well as the first known
picaresque novel, “Lazarillo de Tormes” portrays the clever ploys of a young Salamancan boy determined to outsmart his long string of masters. This Spanish novella ...
This complete and unabridged edition is the only complete critical edition in paperback. Samuel Johnson ...
This complete and unabridged edition is the only complete critical edition in paperback. Samuel Johnson
was a poet, essayist, dramatist, and pioneering lexicographer, but his continuing reputation depends less on his literary output than on the fortunate accident of finding ...
In no branch of human knowledge has there been a more lively increase of the ...
In no branch of human knowledge has there been a more lively increase of the
spirit of research during the past few years than in the study of Psychology, Concentration and Mental Discipline. Many points of mental doctrine have been ...