
"Les Liaisons Dangereuses" author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' daring extended beyond the scandalous content contained within his 1782 novel. If its themes of vengeance, power, lust, duplicity and cruelty went too far, his aspirations for his novel's legacy reached further still.
Laclos' epistolary novel spins a web of decadent self-involvement and class warfare through the exchange of letters between the Marquise de Merteuil, a wealthy widow, and her former lover Vicomte de Valmont.