Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Born in Amiens in 1741, Pierre Ambroise Francoise Choderlos de Laclos entered the army at the age of eighteen and spent the next twenty years in various garrison towns without ever seeing battle. In 1779 he was sent to the island of Aix to assist in building a fort, and there wrote Les Liaisons Dangereuses. In 1786 he married Marie-Soulange Duperre and became an exemplary husband and father. He left the army in 1788, entered politics and was twice imprisoned during the Reign of Terror. He returned to the army as a general under Napoleon in 1800, and died at his post in Taranto, Italy, in 1803. Laclos also wrote a treatise on the education of women and another on Vauban, but it is for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, his single masterpiece, that he is remembered. Translated by Richard Aldington.