CELLTEXTS

LETT.1790.13'.SADE

Marquis de Sade: Letters from Prison

translated from the French, with an Introduction and an Epilogue by Richard Seaver, The Harvill Press, London, 2000 (1999)

* 1740, Condé palace, Paris, † 1814, Insane asylum at Charenton, Paris

Charge: Offence to the Public Morals
Prison: Insane asylum, Charenton, Paris (Map)

This volume collects most of the surviving letters that Sade wrote during his more than thirteen-year imprisonment in the dungeons of Vincennes and the Bastille, and the Charenton Asylum, from 1777 to 1790.
He was thrity-seven when he went to prison this time (he had been in prison several times before, once in debtor's prison and thrice for offense to the morals of the kingdom), and when he was freed, on Good Friday, 1790, he was fifty vastly overweight from lack of fresh air and exercise (and also, despite all his grumbling about prison fare, from overeating), his health virtually ruined, his burning appetites banked to embers. Despite the fact that he had been released by the Revolution, he was an aristocrat, and more dangerously, allied to the royal family by birth and background. A free man at last, he was in this brave new society fully as vulnerable as he had been inside those dank, airless prison walls, about which he complains so often and so eloquently in these letters.[...], p.6-7

Other prison writings by the author:

• Les 120 Journees de Sodome ou L'ecole du Libertinage. preface by Gilbert Lely, Union Generale d'Editions, Paris, 1975
• The 120 Days of Sodom in "The 120 Days of Sodom and other writings.", Compiled and Translated by Austryn Wainhouse & Richard Seaver, Grove Press, New York, 1987 (1966) with an essay by Simone de Beauvoir, "Must We Burn Sade?" (1953) and an essay by Pierre Klossowski, "Nature as Destructive Principle." (1964)
• Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, & Other Writings Compiled and Translated by Richard Seaver & Austryn Wainhouse, with introductions by Jean Paulhan of l'Academie Francaise and Maurice Blanchot, Grove Press, New York, 1990 (1965)
• Justine. in: L'Oeuvre Du Marquis De Sade, Introduction, Essai Bibliographique et Notes pare Guillaume Apollinaire, Paris,
• Les Infortunes de la Vertu Chronologie et preface par Jean-Marie Goulemot, Garnier Flammarion, Paris, 1969
• Les Infortunes de la Vertu Chronologie et preface par Jean-Marie Goulemot, Garnier Flammarion, Paris, 1969
• La Marquise de Gange Edition etablie, presentee et commentee par Beatrice Didier, Librairie Generale Francaise, 1974